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LUSO-AFRJCAN REAL MARAVILLOSCP.-. A STUDY ON THE CONVERGENCE OF LATIN AMERICAN AND LUSO-AFRICAN LITERATURES

DISSERTATION

Presented in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Hanna Betina Gotz

The Ohio State University 1998

Dissertation committee: Approved by

Dr. Jaime Giordano, Adviser Dr. Helena Kaufman . ^ Dr. Francis Abiola Irele . Adviser Department of Spanish and Portuguese UMI Number: 9911197

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by

Hanna Betina Gotz

1998 ABSTRACT

This Ph.D. dissertation aims to contrast the novels of the Angolan writers Arthur Pestana dos

Santos - Pepeteia - and José Agualusa with one exponent of theReal Maravilloso Latin America; Manuel

Scorza. From this parallel I want to establish the connections between the former and the latter and show that the novels by the African writers belong to the narrative of the Real Maravilloso Literature.

According to the Real Maravilloso theory, formulated by Alejo Carpentier. Real Maravilloso literature is an exclusively Latin American phenomenon, and therefore, his African counterparts could not be labeled as such.

My study in comparative literature, however, concludes that writers of other ex-European colonies also present traces of what is understood as Real Maravilloso. In order to show that this phenomenon is not exclusively Latin American 1 anchor my analysis on the hypothesis that Real Maravilloso literature emerges as a literary form that subverts the European colonial discourse, that is, the European narrative form of the canon novel in the sense that it attempts to find its own discourse form, independent and antagonic in relation to the Eurocentric matrix. This is the case of Pepeteia and Agualusa, of the postcolonial generation of Angolan writers, who, according to Pires Laranjeira, begin to resort to fantasy and endow some of the characters with magic qualities.

Secondly, 1 conclude that these authors, among many non-Latin American writers, stop believing in the Utopian ideal of national reconstruction which is typically neoclassic in nature and modem in its western origin. They develop a narrative that interacts with a much more complex, ambiguous and indeterminate reality. In other words, they abandon what Jean-François Lyotard calls the metanarrative

(which can be characterized by a simplistic worldview, compiled of binarisms such as East'West, colonizer/colonized, capitalist/socialist, Christian/non-Christian or heathen, among others), because this western literary form is imposed during the period of colonization and does not conform to the reality of the recently independent nations. Therefore, this study demonstrates that the Real Maravilloso can not be characterized as Latin American per se. but rather as belonging to a postmodern aesthetics.

Ill Dedicated to my parents Hans and Hanna,

and to the late Professor Kubavanda

IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Never before have the words by Gabriel Garcia Marquez been so true and clear to me as while 1

was writing this dissertation. He said that writing is "como un nâufrago en medio del mar. Si. es el oficio

mas solitario del mundo. Nadie puede ayudarle a uno a escribir lo que esta escribiendo."

Because it is such a solitary and difficult act, 1 would like to thank everyone who directly or

indirectly helped me survive the shipwreck and finally get to the shore.

1 am indebted to the members of my committee. Profs. Jaime Giordano, Helena Kaufman, and

Francis Abiola Irele, for their knowledge, encouragement and patience. The Department of Spanish and

Portuguese, and its staff, for always having been so supportive. My other professors, for having opened so

many routes of knowledge that allowed me to sail off. The Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, for

giving me a leave-of-absence. To Prof. Élvio Funck, my English professor back in college, between 1982-

86, for encouraging me to go into a graduate program abroad, and for writing me my first letter of

recommendation, and for meeting with me 12 years later and offering to read my manuscript and checking

my English.

1 thank Vitor Westhelle, my brother-in-law and friend, for having been my outside mentor and for

being the devil’s advocate. My sister Gigi, my friends Rosalia and Beth a, for nagging me to finish this

dissertation and being there for me whenever 1 felt like giving up and sinking with the ship. Jane, for

making my stay in Columbus more bearable during the three months prior to the defense.

I would also like to thank my mom for her prayers. My dad, for his joking threats: "If you don’t

want to be a pastor’s wife or a housewife, you’d better start working hard, and now!” That was before 1 even finished high school!

A special thanks to Karen and John, my guardian angels!

A big hug to all of you and to many other friends, for being so marvelously real, whether present or absent! VITA

January 9, 1962 ...... Bom. Roiante, RS. Brazil.

1986 B.A.. Languages and Literature, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

1989 ...... M.A.. African Literature. Black Studies. The Ohio State University.

1991 ...... M.A.. TESOL. Department of Education. The Ohio State University.

1989-1995 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate. Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The Ohio State University

FIELD OF STUDY

Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese

Specialization: Contemporary Novel in Latin America and Lusophone Africa

Minor Field: Literary Theory

VI TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... ii D edication...... iv Acknowledgements ...... v V ita ...... vi List of Figures...... x

Chapters:

Introduction...... 1

1. The Modem cathedral ...... 9

I. I The Adventures of Modernity: all that is solid melts into air (Berman)...... 9

1.1.1 Modernity's first phase: challenging Absolutism - the medieval cathedral...... 11 1.1.2 Modernity's second phase: the Enlightenment Project - the modem cathedral...... 12 1.1.3 The modem sensibility ...... 14 1.1.4 The modem irony ...... 17 1.1.3 Modernity's third phase - flaws in the modem cathedral ...... 22 1.1.6 M odemity’s ultramodem stag e ...... 25

1.2 The Tragedies of Modemity - the metanarrative (Lyotard) ...... 30

1.2.1 The legitimation of Knowledge ...... 30 1.2.2 The language of knowledge: the narrative ...... 31 1.2.3 The narrative of totalizing discourses: the metanarrative ...... 32

1.3 Third World facing Modem ity and Postmodemity (Jameson)...... 33

2. The Aesthetics of Modemity and Postmodemity ...... 43

2.1 Representing the un(re)presentable (Lyotard, Mchale, Hutcheon) ...... 43

2.1.1 Postmodemity: slackening or intensification of modem ideals?...... 43

VII 2.1.2 The modem aesthetic of realism as the aesthetic of the beautiful ...... 46

2.1.3 The postmodern aesthetic as the aesthetic of the sublime ...... 47 2.1.4 The metafiction...... :...... 48 2.1.5 Change of dominant ...... 49 2.1.6 The role of History ...... 52 2.1.7 Pluralism...... 54 2.1.8 Liminality...... 55 2.1.9 Against the allegory ...... 59

2.2 The Real Maravilloso narrative as a postmodern aesthetic principle ...... 59

2.2.1 Origin: Roh and Carpentier ...... 60 2.2.2 Estrangement and extraordinariness ...... 61 2.2.3 Hidden behind the metanarrative ...... 61 2.2.4 Myultiplicity of representation ...... 62 2.2.5 Spontaneous or artificial phenomena...... 63 2.2.6 Production and reception ...... 63 2.2.7 Referentiality and representation ...... 65 2.2.8 Otherness and difference ...... 66 2.2.9 Mythical and historical consciousness ...... 68 2.2.10 Against the modem cathedral ...... 69 2.2.11 The autochthonous cathedral ...... 70

Explosion of the Modem cathedral: flaws in the metanarrative...... 72

3.1 The Enlightenment Project in Latin America...... 72

3.1.1 Foundational discourses ...... 72 3.1.2 The emergence and evolution of the realist narrative in Latin America...... 81 3.1.2 Contextualization of the neorrealist or socio-realist novel in Latin America...... 91

3.2 From the neorrealist to the Real maravilloso novel in Latin America : The Peruvian Manuel Scorza...... 99

4. Imperfect Chapels ...... 121

4.1 Evolution of the Lusophone-Affican novel: from the perfect modem cathedral to the imperfect chapel...... 121

4.1.1 Consciencia vencida - the wounded land ...... 122 4.1.2 The pre-modem cathedral - the colony...... 128 4.1.3 Mvthical consciousness...... 131

VIII 4.2 The neorrealist novel in Lusophone Africa: Artur Mauricio Pestana dos Santos (Pepeteia)...... 133

4.3 Facing Modernity within a postmodern context: Imperfect Chapels ...... 173

5. Temples of Miracle ...... 182

5.1 Lusophone African Real Maravilloso ...... 182

5.1.1 From retelling history to storytelling ...... 183 5.1.2 The cracks in the national edifice - Imperfect Chapels...... 185 5.1.3 The Postmodern Temples of Miracle...... 183 5.1.4 Resemanticizing ancient myths ...... 191 5.1.5 Fables and Riddles: the past reinterpreting the present...... 193 5.1.6 Historical consciousness trhough Mythic consciousness ...... 195 5.1.7 Reconstructing meaning ...... 198

5.2 The Luso-African novelist José Eduardo Agualusa ...... 199

5.2.1 From Imperfect Chapels to Temples of Miracle...... 201 5.2.2 Representing the unrepresentable...... 207 5.2.3 Parody and M etafiction ...... 215 5.2.4 The past as a mirror for the present ...... 218 5.2.5 The textual collage ...... 219

6. Conclusion ...... 227

Bibliography ...... 247

IX LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

I. Evolution of Latin American and Lusophone African Literatures 246 INTRODUCTION

In De Letra em Riste Pires Laranjeira contends that some writers of the New Generation of

Angolan Literature “abre[m] brechas de fantasia e transm(item] a alguns personagens delirios magicos'."

which free the author from the “responsabilidade de fidelidade ao real empirico" (102). This contention,

that the most recent generation of Luso-African writers is beginning to break loose from a realist narrative

and slowly resorting to fantasy in order to recreate a specific context or reality, suggests a possible

connection with the Real Maravilloso literature, which started to emerge in Latin America around the

second half of this century.

This dissertation aims to examine this possible convergence of the Latin American Real

Maravilloso literature and the literature produced in Lusophone Africa, more precisely in Angola, so as to

establish the eventual links of connection between the first and the latter, and to understand what socio

political, cultural and literary variables might have led these two literar>' endeavours to take the direction of the Real Maravilloso.

Apparently, this convergence seems to make no sense since, from its very beginning. Real

Maravilloso was understood as an exclusively Latin American phenomenon; Alejo Carpentier coined the terra Real Maravilloso americano to imply precisely this idea, that it is American and not African, not

European, not anything else.' Therefore, Laranjeira's statement comes as a challenge to the equation "Real

Maravilhoso equals Latin America" because it forces us to regard the Real .Maravilloso narrative as a much broader phenomenon related not only to the geographical, cultural and mythical reality of Latin America

'Alejo carpentier. El reino de este mundo. Introduction and Tientos y Diferencias. chapter on "De lo real maravilloso americano." but also to other aspects of the human and cultural experience Latin America and Africa might have in

common.

Let us first examine why Real Maravilloso was considered to be Latin American, then can we see

what role other variants might have played in its emergence as a narrative mode in other parts of the world

as well. In 1949. in his preface to El reino de este mundo. Alejo Carpentier firmly states that in the

American Continent reality cannot be described and fictionalized according to a European episteme. For

instance, what could be characterized as unreal, fantastic or marvelous from the standpoint of a European

Weltanschauung, could perfectly be characterized as real when depicted from an American perspective,

from an autochtonous mode of representation. Carpentier argues that not even the European surrealist

movement^ — which placed emphasis on theunheimliche and uncanny aspects of reality — could account

for the marvelous and magical aspects of the American reality. Contrary to the surrealists’ perspective, the

magic and the fantastic in America is not created by means of artistic or technical illusions, or by means of

hallucinations, alcohol, drugs or other forms of artificially created forms of perception and representation.

In the American Continent the "fantastic inheres in the natural and human realities of time and place, where

improbable juxtapositions and marvelous mixturesexist by virtue of Latin America's varied history, geography, demography and politics —not by manifesto" (Zamora and Paris 75). In other words, it is not by way of a decree or a literary manifesto that reality suddenly becomes endowed with these magical and marvelous qualities. In Tientos y Diferencias. Carpentier makes this very clear: "De ahi que lo maravilloso

invocado en el descreimiento - como lo hicieron los surreliastas duante tantos anos - nunca fue sino una. tan aburrida, ai prolongarse. como cierta literatura onirica arreglada.’ ciertos elogios de la locura. de los

'The unheimliche, uncanny (in Freud’s terminology), as well as the magical and fantastic aspects with which Surrealism dealt with are said to be mainly artificial creations. Surrealist and modernist writers created these effects by playing with literary artifices such as the dimension of time and space (psychological time and space, public versus private time and space) and by means of other artificially created sensations of illusions such as hallucination, alcohol and drugs, that would create an atmosphere of unreality. que estâmes muy de vuelta” (96). In America, on the contrary, a literary artifice or trick will not be

necessary to create magic. We only need be reminded of Christopher Columbus 's descriptions of what he

found in America to understand Carpentier s theoretical formulations on what he called "marvelous"

reality: What Columbus found in America was so different from what his European referents could

cognitively assimilate that he called the new reality paradisiac, marvelous and beyond natural realist

description. This corroborates another important aspect in relation to the magic and marvelous that inheres

the Latin American reality. The elements of Latin American reality which Christopher Columbus and other

Europeans through the last five centuries have considered magic and extraordinary are. without exception.

non-European in origin. According to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the elements of reality that were considered extraordinary, fantastic and almost unrepresentable from the European stand point can be traced back to the presence and influence of marginalized ethnic communities, namely the native indigenous and the African communities which are essentially oral in their traditions. Garcia Marquez emphasizes the fact that "la realidad no termina en el precio de los tomates o de los huevos. La vida cotidiana en America Latina nos demuestra que la realidad esta ilena de cosas extraordinarias" and where everyone "sabe alii narrar historias” (72) As Garcia Marquez puts it in El olorJe lagiiay-aba, his taste for the oral tradition, so present in his marvelous real novels, come from his grandparents who were descendientes de gallegos. y muchas de las cosas sobrenatu rales que me contaban proven fan de Galicia. Pero creo que ese gusto por lo sobrenatural propio de los gallegos es también una herencia africana. La costa Caribe de Colombia, donde yo naci. es con el Brasil la region de America Latina donde se siente mas la infiuencia de Africa"

(72-3. emphasis added).

Thus, if the Real Maravilloso narrative is that which manages to transpose into writing the techniques of storytelling for it best depicts the subcultural and non-hegemonic environment of Latin

America, then it would make sense to affirm that this same Real Maravilloso could be used to describe the cultural reality in Africa itself, for this region also differs from Europe inasmuch as the natural, cultural. mythical and political elements of that Continent are concerned. From a European referential, the African

reality will also appearunheimlich. magic and fictional.

Once it is established that the Real Maravilloso may in fact emerge in other regions of the world,

one can go on to pursue other variables that possibly relate to or explain the convergence between

Lusophone African and Latin American Literatures. It is well-known that historically both Latin America

and Africa were colonized by Europe and. therefore, share a similar relation of antagonism with the

canonical and eurocentric literary tradition. Colonialism is certainly a variable to be considered in

determining the emergence of the Real Maravilloso in Africa because, like in Latin America, the people

were subjected to a process of déculturation of native traditions on the one hand, and acculturation or

europeanization. on the other.^ Thus, the effort of literarily capitalizing on Latin America's and Africa's

Otherness — its geographical, its historical, its cultural, its linguistic differences and extraordinariness —

has to do with the elaboration of a counterdiscourse, a discourse of resistance, in which the redefinition of

the "I", according to the peoples’ own categories, is an inevitable consequence of their socio-political and

historical development.

If this hypothesis is accepted, it becomes imperative to insert this examination ofReal

Maravilloso within the framework of current discussions on Modemity and Postmodemity. especially the

points of view brought up. on the one hand by thinkers such as Jean-François Lyotard, who see Modemity

from a very negative perspective, as an all-encompassing and totalizing form of power legitimation and cultural homogeneization. which has loosely been identified with the term m etanarrative — which purports that all attempts at defining an identity are useless and sterile — and. on the other hand, by thinkers such as Marshall Berman and Octavio Paz. who see Modemity as a dialectical process of human

’ Ngûgî Wa Thing'o has dedicated a whole book to the question of the politics of language in African literature, which is entitled, precisely. Decolonising the Mind England. Nairobi. Portsmouth. New Hampshire: James Currey Heinemann. 1986. growth and development that inaugurated a tradition of rupture and internal renovation and adaptation of the ideas Modemity has brought forth. To counterpoise these two antagonic interpretations of Modemity.

Linda Hutcheon s . Brian McHale’s and Fredric Jameson’s ideas on Postmodemity should also help us understand that the Real Sdaravilloso represent the deconstruction of and a break from traditional realist narratives imposed by the West.

Embedded in the concept of Modemity is the European project of Enlightenment and the formation of modem nation-states. This project, due to colonization, has been handed down as an ideal to the ex-colonies, having imprinted its marks on the way postcolonial nations envision their own projects of national reconstruction after independence. This Enlightenment Project whether consciously or not. presented those nations with a paradigmatic model for development to be followed regardless of their socio-political, historical and economic needs. As they attempted to implement this modem national project, nations throughout the world where then pushed into the categorization of First World or Third

World, depending on their success or failure in implementing the Enlightenment ideal.

In the present study, this Enlightenment project or ideal will be metaphorically referred to as the

Modern Cathedral, for it stands symbolically as a cultural revolution against the backward mentality that reigned in and ruled Europe before the advance of humanist, rationalist and neoclassical endeavours that form the base of the Enlightenment Project and of Modemity itself. This metaphor can also be used to represent the efforts of other non-western nations struggling to invest their reality with criteria of

Modemity.

Thus, instead of simply taking Laranjeira's contention - that African writers are beginning to present traits of the marvelous real in their own narrtives - to signify that Latin American Real Maravilloso narratives have exerted an intertextual influence on the emerging Luso-African novel, it is believed that one ought to view this convergence rather as a result of counterdiscursive practices against the modem

European novel which has deliberately helped to reinforce and legitimate the myths and ideals of the Enlightenment Project. This is, undoubtedly, what Carpentier had in mind when he suggested that Latin

America needed to redefine its literary enterprise and make it more suitable to the Latin American episteme and ontology. This is why he proposed the reconceptualization of the Latin American novel as the novel of the Real Maravilloso Americano. In other words, in this study, it will not be claimed that there is a causal connection between the Latin American Real Mara\’illoso and what is taking place in the literarv arena in

Africa. What will in fact be claimed is that such movements are fruits of the same phenomenon, that is. a rupture with the western expression of Modemity and a renovation in the architecture of that perfect

Modem Cathedral, so that Latin America s and Africa's unique needs may be met. In tragic terms, this

"renovation" or subversion of the European literary mode can be seen as the destmction of the European architectural model; this rupture or destruction could be termed the "Fall from the sacred," for it symbolizes the disillusionment with the project of Modemity that was first imposed, then adopted, and only later questioned and adapted to the particular realities of Latin America and Africa.

The Real Maravilloso literature certainly does not conform with the modem Westem narrative legitimation of the Enlightenment ideals. Neither does it completely break away from it. It needs to be conceived as an altemative and critical literary expression of Modemity that seeks to reinsert the autochtonous and disalienated subject into the center of the narrative. The Real Maravilloso can therefore be understood as a conscious political and literary "tactics," to use de Certau's terminology, deployed by authors to cope with the inconsistencies between an ideal orientation of the world (the ideas that emerged from the European project of Enlightenment) and their nations' actual reality. In other words, when post- independent writers realized that the very tool they were employing to represent their realities was also setting them some “tricky traps," it was time to question this metanarrative from within. Post-independent writers realized they had to make a choice between a) insisting on a portrayal of a world that is apparently shaped by a preexisting and paradigmatic order, by a structural model which configures reality as a totalizing unity in which the world is conceived through binary oppositions charged with an either positive or negative value, such as East and West, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed, socialist and

capitalist, Christian and non-Christian, civilized and primitive, bourgeoisie-elite and proletariat: or between

b) challenging the European model to propose altemative views and representations of reality, since this

model is unable to explain the indeterminacy, ambiguity, complexity and. let 's not forget, magic of their

countries' reality. Those who opted for a discourse of c/elegitimation inexorably began taking the road that

explores the marvelous, extraordinary and particular representations of their reality. Those ended up

resorting to postmodern narratives, the Real Maravilloso mode being one of them.

The main intent of this study is. therefore, to examine instances in the evolution of the Latin

American and Lusophone African novels as they express changing socio-political and literary attitudes

from Modemity towards Portmodemity. that is. from the realist generation (nation-building metanarrative)

to the neorrealist generation which experiments with altemative forms of representation that culminate in

the Real Maravilloso.

Chapter I - The Modem Cathedral - will provide theoretical considerations on the concept of

Modemity and Postmodemity and will also establish the relationship of these two concepts with

Colonialism and third-world nationhood. Chapter 2 - The Aesthetics of Modem it}' and Postmodemity - will explore the aesthetic principles that permeate the realist and the marvelous realist narratives and will demonstrate that the former belongs to the modem aesthetic while the latter to the postmodem. Chapter 3 -

Explosion of the Modem Cathedral: Flaws in the metanarrative - will examine the role of literature as it relates to Modemity and Postmodemity and will, therefore, examine the development of the novel, from

Realism (the Perfect Modem Cathedral) into Neorrealism (Explosion of the Modem Cathedral) in the specific contexts of Latin American and Lusophone African literaiy production. It will explore the way in which Latin America and Lusophone Africa relentlessly face, appropriate and subvert Modem it} for their own use. This part of the study will be anchored mainly on Cedomil Goic 's Historia de La Novela

Hispanoamericana. which is a superior attempt at periodizing the Latin American literary production according to certain aesthetical and socio-cuiturai characteristics of specific generations of writers. This chapter will also explore in detail the trajectory of Manuel Scorza from Neorrealism intoReal Maravilloso. in an attempt to understand what ideological truths, values and pressupositions might have led the Modem

Cathedral to slowly crumble, and what exactly motivated the changes in his literary aesthetics. In Chapter 4

- Imperfect Chapels - the literary accomplishments of the Luso-African neorrealist Artur Mauricio

Pestana dos Santos, also known as Pepeteia, will be presented in contrast to Manuel Scorza, in order to establish how both writers, after the Modem Cathedral ruined, manage to create altematives to the

European models of representation of reality as they build their own chapels, which, however imperfect, are conceived according to their own imaginary, their own values, needs and truths, and no longer according to the European metanarrative. Their writing will demonstrate how the passage from neorrealist to Real Maravilloso narratives take place. Chapter 5 - Temples of Miracle - will demonstrate how the fact that all the third-world nations were able to build were Imperfect Chapels led the present generation of writers to relentlessly abandoned the modem totalizing and universal myths in favor of narratives that destabilize fixed truths, ideals and meaning. This will be illustrated through the narrative of José Eduardo

Agualusa. Instead of following the path of his predecessors by continuing to forge the myth of the Modem

Cathedral, the foundational discourse in other words, Agualusa will present the altemative of Temples of

Miracle, precisely because these temples - ephemeral, provisional and unstable constructions as they are - promise no solid meaning, no truths and myths and, therefore, better reflect the postmodern condition in which all that is solid melts into air. This chapter will, in other words, attempt to recharacterize/ rede fine the

Real Maravilloso much less as a Latin American but rather as a postmodem and postcolonial literary phenomenon. CHAPTER 1

THE MODERN CATHEDRAL

£.Qué queremos decir con esta palabra: modemidad? ^Cuândo comenzô? Aigunos piensan que se iniciô con el Renacimiento. la Reforma y el Descubrimlento de America: otros suponen que comenzô con el nacimiento de los Estados nacionales, la institucion de la banca, el nacimlento del capitalisme mercantll y la aparlclon de la burguesia: unos pocos subrayan que lo decisive fue la revoluclon clentlfica y filosôfïca del slglo XVII. sin la cual no tendriamos nl técnlca nl Industrla. Todas estas oplnlones son admlslbles. Alsladas son Insuficlentes; unldas. ofrecen una expllcaclon coherente. (Paz 32)

1.1 The adventures of Modemity: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air... Marshall Berman

Perhaps because he Is a New Yorker.' who was able to watch from a very close spot the

transformations that his city — “the capital of the world” — underwent throughout the course of five

decades. Marshall Berman tends to see Modemity as a "a mode of vital experience - experience of space

and time, of the self and others, of life's possibilities and perils - shared by men and women all over the

world today."' In All That is Solid Melts into Air Berman states that Modemity is a universal historical

experience that has not only Impacted European. African, and American nations as well as nations elsewhere, but has also united the peoples of all these continents In a liberating and paradoxical adventure

"into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of stmggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish" (15). Berman’s way of defining Modemity Implies, no doubt, that, as a project. Modemity

' Marshall Berman experienced Modemity first-hand when, in the mid 20s. his native district of Brooklyn. New York was cut right In the middle to give way to a modem parkway, a highway project that did not leave one stone of the old neighborhood untumed. It was with pain but also with a shameful enthusiasm that he heard the stories of the modernization In Brooklyn during his childhood. From the stories and from what he saw taking place there In the following decades, he leamed to watch and appreciate how the process of Modemity functions at the local and global levels. Indubitably. It was those seminal experiences as a child and an adolescent that led him to write so enthusiastically about the adventures o f Modemity In real life and In literature.

' Marshall Berman. All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience o f Modernity, p. 15. All future references to this work will be Indicated within the text. appealed to everybody everywhere and not just in Europe, and that under no circumstances was it a

peaceful, static, or carefree experience.

According to Berman, the transformations that Europe underwent since the dawn of Modemity.

from the Renaissance onwards, can only attest to the fact that Modemity made itself be felt worldwide,

though in different historical moments. Among many other changes that "rescued” humanity from the traps

of the Middle Ages. Berman mentions the discovery of the New World as well as the great scientific

discoveries; the rapid and growing industrialization; the demographic explosion; migration movements

from the country into the cities and the consequent urban development; the formation of nation-states; the

rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie; the development of mass-communication systems. ’ But of all the

changes, he suggests that the changing image of the universe, and of man himself inside this new'

universe, is by far the most important.

From the late sixteenth century onwards, as Europeans began to see themselves differently, that

is. as powerful and creative individuals who could break loose from the chains of Absolutism (Church and the Monarchy), the world presented itself at their feet as an unexplored world of possibilities. This was a time when they could envision having the freedom to tear down the old. thick, and entrapping walls of the

Medieval Cathedral, in order to build a new Modem Cathedral in its place.^

It seems appropriate to put the verb "to rescue” within quotation marks because in the case of Europe, the ideas brought forth by Modemity really did have the intention of rescuing people from the Age of Absolutism and the reigning medieval mentality. However, in other parts of the world, as for instance Latin America and Africa, or even Asia, before Europeans colonized such territories, people did not know what a medieval mentality was. Therefore, they did not necessarily need to be rescued out of a "dark age" into a more "enlightened age.” that is. into a presumably "better" and more promising era.

■' 1 consciously adopt the image of the "Modem Cathedral" as an icon of what the modem myth signifies. In David Lodge’s book Nice Work, he refers to knowledge as the cathedral of the Enlightenment period. Moreover, the modem Enlightenment myth conveys the belief of a latent structural model or ideal that is shared by all nations, by the whole of humanity, regardless of circumstantial, historical, and cultural variants. It is the belief in an essential truth, an essential desire of unity, of equilibrium between nature and the human being within it. The image of the Modem Cathedral also contrasts with Alejo Carpentier 's novel entitled Siglo de las Luces, translated into English as Explosion in the Cathedral - that is, the shattering of this ideal. This image also contrasts with Pepetela's reference to the fact that "homens constroem coisas. mas antes imaginam-nas como projetos perfeitos. Todavia, o acto de constmçâo é doloroso e

10 The Europeans did not. however, act on the new possibilities overnight. Berman divides the history of Modemity into three phases, implying that the "implementation " of Modemity was subject to a process of historical development in which the use of reason itself had to be constantly revised.

Interestingly, he compares the three phases of Modemity with those of the life of Goethe s character Faust, in the homonymous novel. The establishment of this parallel with Faust allows the reader to understand that the stages of development that Goethe s protagonist undergoes serve as an allegory of the new modem man and the formation of new forms of govemments in modem nation-states.

1.1.1. Modernity's first phase; Challenging Absolutism - The Medieval Cathedral

In the first modem phase, from the 15th century to the end of the 18th century, that is. during the

Renaissance. Humanist ideas flourished together with Rationalism. Intellectuals, such as the one portrayed by Goethe's Faust, saw the potential of the transformation of their society emerging from the knowledge' being generated. However, their ideas were still avant-garde and. therefore, difficult to assimilate. The ordinary European man had not yet awoken from the Middle Ages and was unaware of the changes that could begin to take place within the essentially feudal social and political arrangements. These new and hitherto unexplored possibilities actually made both the intelligentsia and the ordinary man very uncomfortable. Modemity during this period was nothing but an ideal, a somewhat remote concept, which

frequentemente se chega à conclusào de que sào sempre capelas imperfeitas" (Expresso 85-R). I deliberately use the image of the cathedral to signify the monumental magnitude of modem ist projects in constrast to posmiodemist projects. According to the most well-known postmodern architects and architecture historiographer, the Italian Paolo Portoghesi, postmodemist projects substitute the faith in large centralized projects by smaller and more particularized constructions, in the sense that their effectiveness is much more visible than any large national projects (Hutcheon 87).

’ The reference to knowledge as a means of transforming society is of utmost importance because, as will be seen in the second part of this chapter, the legitimation of knowledge is at the core of modem thought, it is the icon of the modem cathedral according to Lodge. The new knowledge that is generated is also institutionalized and serves as a paradigm or model of universal validity. The truths this knowledge encompasses are supposedly essential and truthful for the development of humanity as a whole, regardless of the continent, the nation, or the peoples of varying cultures. This knowledge is generated and eventually transformed into a foundational discourse and takes up mythic proportions, as Jean-François Lyotard argues in his book The Postmodern Condition.

II people were unable to convert into practice. Because of that, this first phase of Modernity can be

characterized as a solely European phenomenon with little meaningful repercussions outside (or abroad),

except, perhaps, for the navigations, which led the European man to "discover" and later colonize the

African and the American continents.

In Berman 's opinion. Europe 's archetypal voice of the first phase was Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's,

for he was one of the first intellectuals to signal the changes that were to come with Modernity as being

fruitful but also painful and dangerous: "Europe was at the edge of the abyss." This abyss, which only later would be understood, could be anticipated now as the role that reason would play in the re conceptualization of morality, politics, and aesthetics.

Another important voice to illustrate this first phase, although not mentioned by Berman, is that of

Thomas More, who, in his Utopia, challenged the established mentality and envisioned a world that differed immensely from that of the Middle Ages. More’s ideas in Utopia can be considered one of the pioneering examples of nation-building narratives based on rather humanist, enlightened, and modem ideals. Both

Rousseau and More anticipated accurately what was to come. Rousseau foresaw the difficulties, the

■profundo malestar" that Modernity was to engender, and More, the fact that the envisionment of utopias, especially in the 18''' century, would become "el gran fermento que puso en movimiento a la historia de los sigios XIX y XX, La utopia es la otra cara de la critica y solo una edad cn'tica puede ser inventera de utopias,’’ says Octavio Paz. who seems to sum up exactly what both Rousseau and More had predicted as lying in the future, in the second phase of Modernity, just beginning to emerge (33).

1.1.2. Modernity’s second phase: The Enlightenment Project - The Modem Cathedral

Besides continuing the parallel with Goethe's Faust to characterize M odemity’s second phase,

Berman also resorts to Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche," whose critiques of Modernity are seen as

" Both Marx and Nieztsche will question the way reason was distorted by means of a new morality, the morality of capitalist development,

12 archetypal voices of this phase, which spans from the end of the 18'" to the end of the 19“’ centuries. For

Berman, this time period marks the rise of capitalism, of the bourgeoisie and the class movements, entailing, respectively, great projects and great revolutions that would lead to the actual consolidation of the utopian, the envisioned modem nation-states. This phase is characterized by individual and social unrest and unprecedented political convulsions, when the Enlightenment Project, which had only emerged as a rational ideal in the first phase, was put into motion. This was when the individual finally began to understand that he not only has the freedom but also the potential capacity to break the chains of tradition through reason and to pursue his own dreams and ideals. ' It is worth keeping in mind that the

Enlightenment Project anticipated the necessity of having to share all previously generated knowledge with the ordinary man so that he would be able to skillfully explore his potential and learn how to profit from this recently-gained freedom.*

At this point, one should open a parenthesis and briefly consider what this "learning of how to deal with freedom" was about. In Beantwortung aiifJie Frage: fl^'as ist Aujklcirung.' (Answering the question:

What is Enlightenment?). Immanuel Kant states that the only possible way for men "to escape from their self-incurred tutelage" (the pre-modem age of Absolutism) is by distinguishing between his personal freedom and his public freedom. For Kant, the exercise of personal freedom, a private and individual

’’ In the Epilogue of the first chapter, where Berman analyzes the course of action of Goethe 's Faust, the author briefly explores some of the sources of political and ideological influences where Goethe may have gotten inspiration to build his character. One of these sources was the Paris newspaperLc Globe. which had scientists and engineers contributing with articles and proposals of developmental projects in large-scale and long-term realization, which were, obviously, beyond the financial and economic means of the first capitalist entrepreneurs inspired by the Enlightenment projects. Projects of such magnitude, which were mainly just envisionments in the end of the 18th and 19th centuries, become reality in the modemization process of the 20th century.

* This fact that knowledge needs to be shared, that the masses need to be guided in this first "contact" with knowledge, is confirmed in Lyotard's book The Postmodern Condition. There he states that in the Postmodern age "the old principle [of the Enlightenment and Encyclopaedian Age] that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming obsolete" (4). From this statement we see reconfirmed the necessity during the modem age for the training of minds, for the preparation of individuals to receive the knowledge from which they had been alienated for so long by the morality of the State and the Church.

13 process, does not challenge the preexisting and totalizing structures that oppress the human being. It is the

ability of expressing his thoughts publicly, his ability of "daring to know" [Sapere aude!) before others who

might then subject him to questioning and arguments, that leads modem man to a true exercise of freedom.

For Kant, man has to learn how to use his rational faculties to reach autonomy and emancipation. The

negotiation of discourses, of power relations, in other words, would free modem man from tutelage. ’

1.13. The modem sensibility

The second phase involves rousing people s awareness, of making the masses realize the

mechanism underlying their socio-economic and cultural plight and understanding what altematives there

are to be explored. But whenever he is exposed to new knowledge, to new possibilities, the ordinary man

feels lost. Here it is important to emphasize the fact that knowledge, up to the modem period, had always

implied the notion of foundationalism, that is. "the idea that knowledge is the reflection of tmth and that we can discover a stable foundation for it in God, History or Reason" (Waugh 6). When this notion of

knowledge is shattered, the individual suddenly feels tom inside a world of dichotomies, of tmths lost and

found, of reason and doubt, of rejection of the old and fear of the new.'® It is the phase in which "all that is solid melts into air."" The more man is exposed to knowledge, the less he has to hold on to: "A multitude

’’ In this response to the Berlinische Monaischriji. Kant foresees a sort of domino effect. If freedom is granted relentlessly to those who dare to be wise, then it will, in turn. alTect others and "disseminate the spirit of the rational appreciation of both their own worth and every man’s vocation for thinking for himself' (Waugh 91 ).

The idea that History, Reason and God are constituents of knowledge is very important for this thesis, particularly the notion of History. As will be demonstrated in Chapters 3 and 4, Latin American and African writers had to question the role of History in the constmction of knowledge, of political and social awareness precisely because the dominant and hegemonic versions of History were exclusive and marginalized the voices of the colonized peoples.

" Berman appropriates this famous sentence from Karl Marx’sCommunist Manifesto because he endorses Marx ’s idea and shows that one of Modemity ’s main characteristics is precisely this tradition of mpture, of renewal that can only come from the fact that solid tmths of the previous period are questioned and requestioned and substituted in an endless process of critical transformation. Marx’s sentence is

14 of new experiences offer themselves; but anyone who wants to enjoy them must be more pliable than

Alcibiades. ready to change his principles with his audience, to adjust his spirit with every step " (Berman

18).

The second phase marks the first time that the European man had to learn to "relativize" his values

and certainties and get reacquainted with his self: "Who am I? What do I believe in? What is my

relationship to others? How am I going to go about my desires? How do I envision/ represent/ understand/ organize

reality?" In short, modem man had to grapple, for the first time, with serious epistemological questions he

had never faced before, while under tutelage.

The modem sensibility has its origin precisely in this "atmosphere - of agitation and turbulence,

psychic dizziness and dmnkenness. expansion of experiential possibilities and destruction of moral

boundaries and personal bonds, self-enlargement and self-derangement, phantoms in the street and in the soul" (Berman 18). It is "la edad del ensueno" but also "la edad de la nausea." On the one hand, modem man feels excited, as if under the spell of an illusion; but, on the other, he feels insecure and anxious, for it

is the first time he is given the freedom to take charge of his own destiny. In this new era. the concept of community and collectivity begins to give way to individualism; this recently conquered individuality still generates the feeling of abandonment and uneasiness, not to say the sentiment of .-(ngsf overtaking the subjectivity of the new individual. This is the phase in which Faust has to abandon his comfortable place at the desk, where knowledge is generated, and has to try to devise a plan to put his ideas into practice.

Yet he feels paralyzed. He has the knowledge, and, therefore, the possibility of power, but he is still hung up on old prejudices, moral doubts, and tom by the guilt of having to partially destroy old stmctures. some of which he is not ready or willing to leave behind, in order to build something new in its place. Here Berman draws from Nietzsche the idea that the world is becoming fragmented and contingent and that the new man will only be able to come up with a set of truths for himself by means of completely

practically a materialist synonym to Friedrich Nietzsche s philosophical statement "aesthetics of a crisis." Both maxims, so to speak, suggest the latent self-critical and self-destmctive spirit of Modernity.

15 fictionalizing his reality, and aesthetically shaping his reality in a way that is suitable and coherent for him.

Modem man has the need to make sense out of the fragments, to reinstitutionalize order to be able to

construct a whole picture of reality that is true for himself — his own morality. This fiction or myth he has

to invent is the Enlightenment myth.

Berman contends that from our 20'*' century perspective, we are able to see that Faust will pursue

this myth blindly, enthusiastically, but with fear. Faust will only learn to act at the moment he arrives at a

synthesis, that is. at the moment he learns to deal with the ambiguity of guilt and morality together with his

romantic ideals of transforming his world. His personal dilemma epitomizes the period that the Germans

called Sturm iind Drang.'' Like the new modem man. Faust will need to liberate his inner self and release

his creative energy'^ that was repressed inside him for so long. He can then become an Obermensch. a man

capable of distinguishing between a morality of repression - a morality of slavery and dependence - and a

morality of "true" emancipation, which goes beyond the dichotomy of good and evil that enables the

enlightened man to take charge of his destiny and overcome his "romantic melancholy."'^ But he is only

able to do this through a deal with Mephistopheles.

'■ Berman, throughout his book, uses the words "Modernity" and "Modernism" interchangeably. The impression the reader gets out o f it is that he refers to Modernism as being all avant-garde human endeavors, such as the romantic movement Sturm tind Drang. Thus, it should be noted that Modernism for Berman is not restricted only to the Modernist movement as we know it around the turn of the 20th century .

Here, of course. Berman sees that phase from the perspective of the 20‘''-century man who had already been exposed to the ideas of Freud. Lacan, and Jung — the ideas generated in Psychoanalysis. These theories all argue that it is precisely the repressed unconscious that hinders the creative process and debilitates the human being so as to be unable to transform his inner and his public selves.

Romantic melancholy should be understood as the inability of the romantic man to take action. The romantic man envisions an ideal world, envisions taking action, but always feels lonely and misunderstood, as if the whole world were in a "different wavelength." He is still unable to release his inner and repressed self, for as a romantic being, he is more spiritual than practical. Nature is an ideal, the personification of beauty, and he cannot allow himself to use nature, transform it. for the advancement of society.

16 1.1.4. The modem irony

Goethe’s Mephistopheles - standing for the emerging bourgeoisie, perhaps - shows Faust that within the new capitalist mode he will find the instruments that will allow him to take this leap of faith in order to act. The means and the power to take pragmatic action are there and need to be seized. As soon as he confronts the possibilities of this deal, he will feel more invigorated and will begin to pursue his will more fiercely, free from the weight of mother morality, says Berman, who once again uses Nietzsche to reiterate his point. Mephistopheles will give Faust the courage and the power to make his romantic and utopian dream a reality, i.e.. to conquer the future. This future, however, will not be conquered until he is able to reach the Hegelian synthesis, namely, a perfect balance among mind (reason), body (inner desires and energies), and economical power (capitalism). These three in equilibrium will function as the machine that will propel Faust, the modem man. to progress. This is how his political economy of self-development will be able to emerge. Faust needs to leam to deal with this dialectical process in order to live and keep going; it is the dialectic, which in a short period of time will involve and push the modem economy, the

State, and society as a whole.

This is where the almost invisible irony of the history of Modemity is hidden. The new mling class backs up the modem man who emerges from this capitalistic landscape, at the same time as it produces and establishes it as its legitimating power: the human force that motivates change creates, in other words, the bourgeoisie that will explore it. The masses of laborers are the ones who change the modem landscape, who transform the medieval cathedral into a modem one by fueling the steam engines, the factories, and the new technologies that emerge from capitalism. They are at the base of this modem economic stmcture. but they have no right to enjoy the fruits of their labor, of their "creations." thus causing Marx to posit the question.

"Is this the price Mephistopheles is charging the new modem man for having helped him leap into the world of progress?" Modemization is taking place, but only a small layer within society is profiting from it.

"Modemity is imposing itself from the top to the bottom." Just as the Enlightenment Project had proposed it

17 to be. for when they thought the bourgeois intellectual would have to guide the ordinary man through this process, they implied that the changes would be imposed vertically, from the top down.

A distinction between the llustracion and Aufklanmg might explain why the Project of the

Enlightenment, as described above, is imposed from the top to the bottom, and why it might fail, according to Marx’s and Nietzsche's anticipations, to fully accomplish its goal of emancipation. The Spanish word llustracion can be said to be restricted to the Enlightenment Project in the 18th century, which defended the use of reason against the mythical practices of tutelage and power exerted through faith, superstitions, and religious dogmas, llustracion meant that the masses needed to be taught to acquire knowledge and use reason for themselves and for the benefit of the society as a whole. Aufklcirung. on the other hand, should be understood as a wider intellectual and philosophical preoccupation towards the development of humanity, which is capable of always using reason to be critical, critical even of the role of reason, since it is being used as an instrument for the enslavement of the masses.

Jean-François Lyotard elucidates this well in his view of Modemity. He sees Modemity at the root of a practice of language games and o f knowledge legitimation, precisely because "enlightened reason" was often willfully confused with an instmmental reason, a reason of domination, scientificism as a tool to be used by the dominant class to obtain its goals. Unlike in the Middle Ages, the masses of the enlightened era are supposed to be freed in this process and not enslaved and entrenched once again; because of this, this period is characterized as "enlightened” and should produce different results from those of the previous era!

But instead, the capitalist bourgeois class takes hold of all the unexplored potentialities of Modemity to create its own project, to build its Modem Cathedral, and does so at the expense of its labor force.

It is precisely the labor force that made the bourgeois capital grow, that made the modem ideals become reality, and that is now being victimized. Berman points out that Karl Marx 's critique of capitalism pointed to this contradiction of the modem capitalist society. For Marx, the modem capitalist society will indeed progress, innovate, and advance at an unprecedented rate, as never before in the history of humanity.

But in the same way as it innovates in the means of production, the bourgeoisie should have to improve in

18 the sphere of labor relations and in whatever concerns class division and social relations. But the question is. Freed from any scruple and morality, will the new capitalist individual reckon in the social injustices generated inside his entrepreneurial endeavors?

According to Berman. Marx believed that it was up to the proletariat, as the only real avant-garde force within this modem society, to tear down the structure of this new society which had become almost, if not completely, as oppressive as the medieval society. Both Marx and Nietzsche detected this irony. Marx believed that the proletariat would be the only really emancipatory force within the new capitalist society, for it became conscious that the modes of production actually conditioned the quality of life, the social relations, and any production on the level of the superstructure. Nietzsche believed that if mother morality has. throughout times, prescribed behaviors and weakened the individual's capacity to be critical, this individual would have to leam to deal with his "inner-dichotomies" and re-channel unconscious and instinctive vital energies (supposedly immoral) in order to overcome his seeming incapacity to excel in his creative endeavors and become an Obermensch.

From his ascension to his fall, the modem man's flight seems to have been meteoric. If at the end of the first phase Faust wondered about how he would adapt to the new modem order, at the latter part of the third phase, according to Lyotard, some people began to call for a retum to a past golden age. Perhaps modem man really got to the edge of an abyss, perhaps modem man became more "modem" than he was ready for. But. before getting into modem man's ultramodem or postmodern phase, let us see how Faust overcame his .Angst and changed from a visionary to a doer, a modem developer.

According to Berman. Goethe sees that the "question of development is necessarily a political issue" (63). Faust's projects demand more than willpower and courage; his developmental projects require capital, immense territorial extensions and a huge labor fo rce.H e therefore makes alliances with the ruling

The Enlightenment Projects which were not carried out on a massive scale during the latter part of the 18th century and during the 19th century because early capitalists still did not have all the capital they needed, have come to fruition mainly in the 20th century. Only some individual and private projects were carried out during the second phase, and mainly in England, during the Industrial Revolution.

1 9 class; this is a political bargain Faust and Mephistopheles engage in, in order to put progress into practice.

Faust becomes the modem hero, the hero of development, who builds dams, bridges, roads, factories, multi capital corporations, overcoming any human and natural cost to finally erect the envisioned Modem

Cathedral to his own image: he feels powerful, and hence his actions are monumental, they are cathedrals with a capital "C." As such, modem projects almost attain a divine quality and insinuate that modem man has apparently become an Obermensch. a god, in other words.

As Faust is able to overcome his internal conflicts and free himself from any remaining romantic melancholy, he really does become a doer who enters, in full force, into a third phase of Modemity. This happens when he finally understands that the power and strength of nature — always so idealized and revered during the romantic period — can actually be tamed and serve some practical purposes, thus bringing real benefits to modem man. He abandons his typical romantic and reverent attitude towards a sacred and indomitable nature, and channels all of nature's powers to transform his dreams into reality.

Faust finally comes to the synthesis: reason (knowledge), his inner desires and nature s energy come together as one palpable and monolithic force of transformation. At this point humanity watches

the birth of a new social division of labor, a new vocation, a new relationship between ideas and practical life. Two radically different historical movements are converging and beginning to flow together. A great spiritual and cultural ideal is merging into an emerging social reality [...] Faust is transforming himself into a new kind of man, to suit himself to a new occupation. (Berman 62-63)

When Faust conquers nature and overcomes his own human capacities, the tragedy of the adventurous modem hero makes itself felt even more. Everything and everyone w ho interferes with the process of modemization needs to be eliminated. The modemization process demands impersonality, objectivity, and homogeneity. It, therefore, needs the support of the complex bureaucratic legislating machine of corporate organizations and institutions that have the power to justify and legitimize progress: and it also needs the authority to punish all critical and counter-cultural forces coming from altemative or minority initiatives to obstruct the new order. The moral doubts and moral responsibilities that nurtured modem man’s self-criticism in the previous phase are transferred to the depersonalized state and private apparatuses, freeing him of any guilt. He allows no room for ambiguity and for dialogue.

20 The dialogical process that characterizes the second phase of Modemity is given no space in the

actual developmental process of the 20th century. Faust’s humanity is gone! "This is how the tragedy of

development functions." contends Berman, who goes on to explain that this seems to be "endemic to

modemization: the drive to create a homogeneous environment, a totally modemized space, in which the

look and feel of the world have disappeared without a trace" (68).'^ Through a metamorphosis of values, the

previous halo is lost. Anything that used to be sacred is profaned; "all that is solid melts into air."

According to Lyotard, the only thing that remains is the language — the language games — by which such

practices of constmction and deconstmction take place.

The ironic twist of the modem capitalist tragedy becomes apparent once again. As soon as the capitalist developer, the new man. “has destroyed the pre-modem world, he has destroyed his whole reason for being in the world. In a totally modem society, the tragedy of modemization - including its tragic hero - come naturally to an end. Once the developer has cleared all the obstacles away, he himself is in the wm-. and must go" (Berman 70. emphasis added). Faust needs to forget where he came from, what his earlier anxieties and needs were. The present-day Faust forgets to dialogue with the past and is moved solely by his rational but instmmental will-to-power. In other words, he becomes the man who pushes the button of the incredible machinery he has created, but his soul, his humanity, has become totally obsolete. To argue this point. Berman gets the support of Gunther Stent in his book. The Coming of the Golden .-Ige. where

Stent says the following about the destiny of modem man:

And here we can perceive an intemal contradiction of progress. Progress depends on the exertion of the Faustian man. whose motivational mainspring is the idea of the will to power. But when progress has proceeded far enough to provide an ambiance of economic security for Everyman, the resulting social ethos works against the transmission of the will to power in childrearing, and hence aborts the development of Faustian Man. (81)

The term "homogenizing " was italicized in order to emphasize the importance it will have for later discussions. It will be counterposed by post-colonial discourses which will search for an opposite tendency, that of calling attention to the heterogeneities of socio-political and cultural spaces and narratives.

21 Berman also resorts to Herbert Marcuse, who emerges as a critic of Modemity in the 1960s and

follows along the lines of Max W ebers interpretation of the new man in the beginning of the 20"' century.

For Marcuse, modem man. who seemed to have so much potential in the second phase, used that potential

to progress but also to incarcerate himself. He is trapped by his own actions, his own blindness and

individuality, transforming his heart and body into an automated machine. The ordinar> man. the man of

the masses in the 20th century, becomes mediocre, apathetic, and shows no spirituality or dignity to govem

himself. Berman points out that critics of the 60s such as Marcuse reject Marx and Hegel 's historical vision,

which places faith on the proletariat’s revolutionary power to improve the laborer’s life conditions and social

destiny.

Marcuse sees that an overemphasis on individuality and an exacerbation of reason have led to the

crisis of the Age of Reason, thus paving the way to irrationalism or a non-rational critique of society. In this

kind of reasoning, all values become relative, provisional, compartmentalized, and/or fragmented because

they interrupt the dialogue of the diverse forces that used to link the present reality with the past. (This way of interpreting the 60s, the third phase of Modemity from Berman’s perspective, is refuted by critics such as

Linda Hutcheon and Brian McHale. who do not see the postmodem phase as ahistorical and acritical.)

1.1.5. Modemity's third phase - Flaws in the Modem Cathedral

During the third phase of Modemity. extending from the tum of the 20'*' century into the future, according to Berman.' Rousseau’s prophetic statement — "Europe is at the edge of the abyss’’ — seems to have come true. Berman characterizes the tum of the century, the end of the second phase and the beginning of the third one. as extremely creative not only in the realm of the sciences, economics, and in politics, but

Berman makes it clear in almost every chapter of his book that he does not buy into the concept of “Postmodemity." He seems to convey that those who believe and identify with Postmodemity never really understood what Modemity really meant. also in the realm of modem arts and modem thought. The culture of "isms”'* flourished in Europe.

America, and Latin America. These artistic movements contributed very strongly to the dialectic characteristic of Modemity, in which the presuppositions and the truths underlying the Enlightenment myth, by then concretely established and institutionalized by the bourgeoisie as universals. were either questioned or defied in a process which Marshall Berman and Octavio Paz identify as the tradition o f rupture.

This apparent oxymoron of establishing a tradition, albeit one of rupture, is the basic and most important spring which steadily pushed humanity forward through adventures and tragedies. This tradition of rupture can also be equated to the concept of an aesthetics o f crisis, which permeated all cultural and artistic production throughout the last four centuries, especially the avant-garde art of the tum of the 20'*' century. These artists, like their counterparts in the 19"" century, namely the romantics, continued to nurture the tradition of mpture. of wanting to "to modem ize” Modemity from within the confinements of their new social and cultural order. Like their predecessors, the modemists also took on the task of participating in the tearing down of preexisting models in order to replace them with new ones. However, when the modemists felt helpless and incapable of effectively tearing down the pillars of the modem constmcts from the 19* century, they simply would tum their backs on society in an act of rejection, and would fabricate different realities which were either inspired in iconoclastic visions of mythic and timeless places, or in realities forged inside their own imagination. This was the case of all the modemists: from the expressionists to the cubists, to the surrealists.

The reaction of such artists is explained by the fact that the modem man of the third phase gets so carried away in his effort to prosper and to advance into the promising future he has envisioned, that he completely forgets to nurture his cultural and personal bonds with the past, with his historx. During the first

'* For Berman, all -isms, from Romanticism in the 19“ century to Modemism as well as Impressionism, Expressionism. Futurism. Cubism, and Surrealism in the 20'*’ century are to be considered as avant-garde movements that questioned Modemity from within. Whereas some of them are more radical and really attempted to revolutionize modem thought, others were reactionary or retrograde, in the sense that their rebellion tumed into an ally of conservative trends, such as Futurism, which ended up propagating and fortifying conservative ideologies during the First World War.

23 and second phases of Modemity, the past had served as a parameter, as a source for dialogue. It had been a rich propeller of the dialectical process through which man could look at himself and see the image of who he was and who he might become. The weight of the atmosphere of contradictions between public and private life, between the binaries that were neither annulled nor eliminated, says Berman, tended to be placed upon the individual of the 19"’ century. For that weight to be removed, this man was forced to constantly question his present situation, his accomplishments as well as his failures.

As that pressure was removed, as emphasis was placed solely on advancement and progress, the modem man lost touch with himself. He became as mechanical as his actions, as his inventions. He no longer was the subject of the history he was making. This can be exemplified by the futurists who represented the stmggle between man and machine. In other words, in the third phase, the modem man becomes enslaved by his own inventions and loses his power for self-criticism, for common sense or for innovation, according to Berman. As a consequence, the creative spirit, the imaginative spectmm and the energy for transformation get lost and the aesthetics of a crisis, predicated by Nietzsche, is confirmed.

Irony, tension, and self-criticism are at the base of Modemity's dialectic. When these elements are gone, ambiguity is gone. When ambiguity is gone, the conflict is gone and binarisms tend to polarize situations into an either-or equation. Reality is either accepted or rejected, and socio-political and cultural institutions tend to become totalizing monoliths whose discourse is imposed as a master narrative, as

Lyotard points out." According to Berman, as the 20"’ century advances, all mptural endeavors begin to be seen with blinding enthusiasm and absorbed without ever being questioned, or they are completely rejected; never, however, are they really permeated by the self-criticism which characterized the second phase. From the position of protagonist, [modem man] takes on the position of a secondary character. Now the machine has become the protagonist, while modem man only pushes the button. And here Berman appropriates Max

" The "grand-,” "master.” or "meta” narrative, as Lyotard calls this legitimating discourse, will be explained and defined later in the chapter, in part 1.2. Weber's critique of Modemity and reiterates Weber s point that the new economic order has. indeed, become an "iron cage."

1.1.6. Modemity’s ultramodem stage

Departing from this socio-economic view of the 20th century capitalist and postindustrial enterprises. Berman identifies three modemist tendencies emerging in the cultural arena of the latter half of the 20th century. These tendencies, from Berman's point of view, are less engaged and dialectic than the movements bom out of the self-criticism in the second phase. The first of these modemist tendencies

Berman identifies as an Absent/Withdrawn Modemism. for it produces art for art's sake that can be illustrated by the ideas of Roland Barthes. It is absent in the sense that this modemism establishes no relation between art and modem life. "This art confronts the world of objects, not the world of men with their daily lives and stmggles. The only rightful focus for an artist in any given form or genre was the nature and the limits of that genre: the medium its message" (Berman 30).'"

A second form of modemism from this decade Berman calls "Positive Modemism." It is positive in the sense that it attempts to bring art closer to the public, so as to make the public identify with it. This art. contrary to art for art's sake, is the art of human activity: it connects all human activities — entertainment, technology, services, etc. — with art. showing that this is where art simultaneously comes and departs from. It is the art of performance, street productions, and interdisciplinary creations. It coincides with Pop-Art. and its archetypal voices are those of John Cage and Susan Sonntag. contends

Berman. This form of art imposes no limits, but it is also naive, because it does not denounce and attack the

■° It is important to realize that in The Poetics o f Postmodernism. Linda Hutcheon gives a different interpretation to Roland Barthes’s role as a critic of Modemity. She sees him rather as a positive modemist. who. in his book Mythologies "challenges all which is considered natural’ or obvious’ in our culture — that is, everything that is considered as universal and etemal. and, therefore, immutable." According to Hutcheon, Barthes contends that it is necessarj' to first question and demythify reality, and only then work for change (25). Barthes moves from a stmcturalist to a rather post-structuralist perspective. He begins to argue that the changes in reality are concemed not with material reality itself, but with the way reality is

25 power games, the structures, and institutions which legitimize power and marginalize counter-discursive practices.

The third modemist expression of this period is what Berman calls Negative Modemism, which seems to be the one most commonly confused — or used interchangeably — with the term

■"Postmodemity." The goal of this form of Modemism is to destroy all sorts of traditions, values, and truths.

Violently combative, it embraces the task of tearing down all preexisting stmctures without any questioning, without dialectically opposing them to the past. Negative Modemism. Berman says, departs from the perhaps erroneous understanding that the ideal model of society, which has been pursued since the previous two phases, has passively emerged and developed, with no disturbances and conflicts, in opposition to the point Berman makes in the book presently being examined.

In this sense, it is fair to say that Negative Modemism is anarchic and destmctive precisely because it has not been able to fully grasp the primary momentum that set the whole project of Modemity into motion. Besides, it rebels against the project of the new Modem Cathedral, completely ignoring the fact that its constmction was far from painless and far from perfect. This is precisely Berman's main theory : that the perfect Modem Cathedral is a process of negotiation that should encompass — although it not always has — all layers of society, all forms o f human endeavors — from capitalist engineers and entrepreneurs, to labor workers, to critical thinkers, philosophers, artists, artisans, and bystanders. The power of Modemity, leading to the seemingly unending process of constmction of the Modem Cathedral, is generated from this rich source of dialogue and confrontation. What Berman fails to see in this apparently anarchic posture of the negative modemists is the fact that they do not believe in the modem myth. They

■"see through" this myth and come to the realization that there is no tmth to pursue, and that any insinuation that there is one, is false."'

perceived through language, through the sign systems, the form and not the content. He also argues that even this form will vary, for all forms of narrative can be deconstmcted, layer, after layer of signification.

It is possible to notice that these three modem tendencies so neatly divided by Berman are not so definite and mutually exclusive. Postmodem expressions, as it seems, may share characteristics of the

26 Since Berman's book was published in 1981, he is only able to take a look at modem endeavors until the 1970s and to make guesses at the direction Modemity could take as it nears the end of the 20th century. According to Berman, the modem sensibility completely vanishes in the 70s: "the 70s hastened the disintegration of our world into an aggregation of private material and spiritual interest groups, living in window less monads, far more isolated than we need to be" (34). While the advances in the capitalist and corporate world proceed steadily and more rapidly than ever within the world of information technology and globalization, and at the price of even greater isolation," in the academic, artistic and cultural realm.

Berman observes a total immersion in the world of Stmcturalism."’ Here, aspects such as identity, or history of human development amidst the rampant technological advances, take up a secondary, if not a practically non-existent, role. In a sense. Berman affirms that the 70s produce no avant-garde forms of cultural expression, no -isms, except for a certain mystique of Postmodemity and Postmodem ism, "which strives to cultivate ignorance of modem history and culture, and speaks as if all human feeling, expressiveness, play, sexuality and community have only just been invented - by the postmodemists - and were unknown, even inconceivable, before last week” (33)."^

three. Roland Barthes's perspective evolved and does not fit one tendency only. And this, possibly, happened to other intellectuals and artists who were/are active during this postmodem period.

" Berman explains that the isolation is due mainly to the fact that social scientists give up trying to build a model that would eventually be more truthful to the necessities of modem life. What they do is to fragment Modemity into isolated parts (industrialization, construction, urbanization, market development, formation of elites and so forth) instead of trying to integrate them into a broader unit. This, as Berman explains, frees them from making generalizations and vague totalities. Berman criticizes their attitude, contending that they thus counter the modem goal of conducting the varied array of human activities to work together in an engagement of efforts, in order to guarantee their space in history (32).

^ Structuralism is here understood as a movement which is primarily concemed with language and language systems or stmctures from which any attempt at giving "meaning to things” will depend on the nature of language and representation rather than on the extemal reality being represented.

Once again, it is important to realize that Linda Hutcheon makes a completely different reading of the 70s. From her postmodemist perspective, she understands this decade as the period of "ideological education for many of the thinkers and postmodemist artists of the 80s, and it is today that we can verify the results of this education" (25).

2 7 The only apology Berman pays to the 70s relates to Michel Foucault's engagement with

Modemity. However, he states that Foucault's preoccupation with Modemity was to deconstruct it and point out its flaws. Berman comes to the conclusion that worse than Max Weber. Foucault interpreted all modem activities and desire for freedom as useless, since we are all shaped to fit the mold of Max Weber's

"iron cage." Here Berman's reading of Foucault resembles Louis Althusser's reading of Modemity. He. too. states that whatever altemative and critical action taken on the part of society, especially of marginalized groups, has always been absorbed by the State Apparatuses and other organs of power legitimation, thus losing their critical power. Berman affirms that for Foucault, "any criticism rings hollow, because the critic himself or herself is in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves, since we are part of its mechanism” (34).^ Foucault is being accused of criticizing Modemity’s totalizing discourse by means of an equally totalizing discourse!

It becomes clear that Berman sees the 70s as a ver%' poor decade inasmuch as it did not directly contribute to the tradition of rupture and self-renewal of the discourse of Modemity. For him. the atmosphere was of stifling relations among the diverse human productions because the sense of unity of universal values had been deconstructed and proven to be flawed. The intelligentsia of this decade embraced Foucault's ideas, for these ideas helped them justify their passiveness and hopelessness. In

Foucault they found an explanation for their futile attempts at making their dreams come true. According to

Berman, they surrendered, so-to-speak. to the discourse of Postmodemity. which he sees as a radical cut with the past.

Contrary to Linda Hutcheon s views about Postmodemity. Berman does not seem to believe in a so- called Postmodem era. He does not see Postmodemity in dialogue with the previous phases of Modemity. but merely as a third phase of Modemity that some have called "Late Modemity." Berman criticizes this

Here he takes this quote from the chapter on "Panopticism" in Foucault's Discipline and Punish 226-28.

28 phase, stating that its problem is the absence of the dialectic that characterized the second modem phase.

Berman seems to see this third phase as one in which the people have broken with the tradition of rupture.'^

It may tum out. then, that going back can be a way to go forward: that remembering the modem isms of the nineteenth century can give us the vision and courage to create the modemisms of the twenty- first. This act of remembering can help us bring modemism back to its roots, so that it can nourish and renew itself, to confront the adventures and dangers that lie ahead. To appropriate the modemities o f yesterday can be at once a critique of the modemities o f today and an act o f faith in the modemities - and in the modem men and women - of tomorrow and the dav after tomorrow. (36)

Before passing on to the second part of this chapter on Metanarrative, it may be useful to present

Linda Hutcheon's view on Berman's “third phase of Modemity." For her. this third phase is not at breaking with the historical commitment of the previous phases. Although these seemed like decades of slackening and apparent apathy in relation to the modem ideas, the 60s and the 70s signaled a challenge of "our own concepts, the concepts in which we base ourselves when judging what is order and coherence" (84).

Precisely because there is a lack of centered-referentiality of truths, new discourses find room to emerge and new voices of the marginalized subjects in the First and Third World invent their own means of expression. Disagreeing with Berman. Hutcheon tends to see that

It is again to the 1960s that we must tum to see the roots of this change, for it is those years that saw the inscribing into history (Gutman 1981.554) of opreviously silent' groups defined by differences of race, gender, sexual preferences, ethnicity, native status, class. The 1970s and the 1980s have seen the increasingly rapid and complete inscribing of these same ex-centrics into both theoretical discourse and artistic practice as andro- (phallo-). hetero-. Euro-, ethno-centrisms have been vigorously challenged. (61 )

Hutcheon’s view counterbalances that of Berman and helps us understand why the real marm-illoso narrative, as a counter-discursive practice emerging in Third-World nations, can be inserted in the overall aesthetic of Postmodemitv.

Although Linda Hutcheon. to a certain extent, agrees with Berman when she talks about a certain "conservadorism of the end of the 70s," she affirms that the 80s "may begin to have an impact when thinkers and artists who are educated now begin to produce their work" (25).

2 9 1.2. The tragedies of Modemity — The Metanarrative; Jean-François Lyotard

The conclusion to which Marshall Berman arrives, that in the third phase of Modemity. or in what is also called Postmodemity. the chains of the tradition of mpture are broken, is contested by ardent defenders of Postmodemity. Linda Hutcheon. in her Poetics o f Postmodernism, contends that the prefix

"post.” just as many other prefixes (de. in. anti) that accompany terms related to Theories of Culture, rather than negate or oppose, incorporate what they want to contest to the preexisting terminology (19). Thus, the prefix “post,” in the term "Postmodemity." does not negate but actually reinforces the idea that

Postmodemity acknowledges and departs from the concept of Modemity. Her point is proven correct in the book we are about to examine: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, by Jean-François

Lyotard.

In contrast to Berman. Jean-François Lyotard tends to see the Modem era as a long process of knowledge legitimation. He indirectly sheds light over his perception of Modemity. demonstrating that

Postmodemity does have something to do with Modemity . To comment on the postmodem condition, he invariably draws on parameters and examples from the preceding period of knowledge production.

1.2.1. The Legitimation o f Knowledge

Departing from a presentation of the state-of-the-art in the field of knowledge in Computerized

Societies in the late 1980s and 90s (the Postmodem and Postindustrial Age). Berman actually discusses not only the development of scientific knowledge but how the general production of knowledge should be understood. He demonstrates that what appeared to be a legitimate and authentic preoccupation with the development of a scientific method for the verification of true became a(n) (il)legitimate discourse of power, a narrative of will-to-power and not necessarily one of a will-to-tmth. Lyotard relates this process of power legitimation to the question of language, narrative, and discourse, these three being the means by which the legitimation of knowledge were always accomplished. He defends the position that ever since humanists envisioned to transform the production of knowledge into a collective good, that is. something to

30 be "democratized" or handed down to the masses, the question of its legitimation became important. Before that, while knowledge was still a commodity of an elitist and hermetic intelligentsia — as in Faust's first phase - the claims of knowledge proof and validity (of truth, in other words) were legitimated by the intelligentsia, by scientists alone. Nobody outside those circles had the means or the need to challenge these claims, or the way these claims were represented. The language of knowledge, then, had a purely denotative function.

1.2.2. The language of knowledge: The narrative

With the rise of the Enlightenment ideas and the emergence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, this knowledge began to serve a function that was more pragmatic, and not that of science alone. As such, it was imperative to justify it according to a set of interests within an ideological program, which is referred to as the project of building the new Modem Cathedral."^ Here it is possible to interlink the production of knowledge with Faust's second and third phases, in which he is only able to put his projects into practice after a deal with Mephistopheles, representing the bourgeoisie and capitalism. Thus, this knowledge will have clear, but perhaps not visible and overt, ideological and political connotations, and will be subject to a specific agenda — instrumental reason.

The language used to legitimate this new function of knowledge is no longer denotative but rather prescriptive and/or performative in the sense that it is invested with authority and determines a certain purpose and a certain expectation of an executory behavior, not to say obedience. Performative language is the language of performance, i.e., of actions that need to be performed, of goals that need to be met, and not necessarily the language of truth — critical reason. This is, according to Hutcheon, what postmodernism teaches us. From a retrospective view, postmodemists are able to realize "that all cultural practices have an

On page 39 of his book, Lyotard refers to this Enlightenment Project, the project of the Modem Cathedral, somewhat cynically, as it seems, for he calls this legitimation process "the emancipation apparatus flowing from theAufklanmg. " 'The word "apparatus” gives it the sarcastic tone, for it underscores

31 ideological subtext which determines the conditions of the possibility of production and of meaning itself

(15).

Structuralists and mainly poststructuralists see this as an inherent problem in language. Because of this problem, Postmodemity refuses to formulate and propose any structure that will be able to overcome the problem of representation or order reality by means of a master narrative supposedly not liable of deconstruction - for it would in fact report back to a myth of totality, of universality. Thus, the main difference between Modemity and Postmodemity perhaps lies not so much in the fact that they differ in their critique of human development, but in the fact that the latter gives up completely the notion that there is a universal or essential model of truth to be pursued. To clarify, one might again look at Faust. Being a modem subject — his mind having been shaped by the Enlightenment Project — Faust believes in the possibility of a synthesis. He believes in a sublime and universal order of things. He believes and nurtures the romantic ideal of leading civilization to such a high stage of human development that people will no longer incur in ideological practices that were typical in the Middle Ages. That is the platonic vision of society, which the neoclassic and enlightened being reinforced through narratives. He not only constructed this myth, but nurtured it and fought for it until it became what postmodemist critics call a metanarrative, a prescriptive and totalizing discourse that needs to be constantly revised.

1.2.3. The narrative of totalizing discourses: The metanarrative

The contradictions, the insecurities, and the anxiety that modem man of the second phase experienced were due mainly to his belief that through his endeavors, through his will to power, his strength, energy, and commitment to self-criticism, he would finally arrive at a synthesis, at a point in which he would be able to organize chaos and find universal truths to hold onto. Berman has demonstrated that it was this urge that motivated Faust to go after his dreams and ideals. But for Lyotard, who sees

Modemity much less as an adventure and more as a tragedy, these efforts of ordering reality led to the the fact that the Enlightenment project served ideological functions and was not as emancipatory as it was ultimate form of power, of a narrative that encompassed all critical attempts at restructuring a society organized around the principles of truth and interest of the bourgeoisie. Since the bourgeosie retained the power, it was in fact the ruling class that made “the games of scientific language become the games of the rich, in which whoever is wealthiest has the best chance of being right. An equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth is thus established” (Lyotard 45).

Thus, when the intellectuals of the third phase realize what is behind the modem ideal, they become skeptical. Then the notion of a “truth” that encompassed the idea of universality, of a foundational or even mythic discourse that presumed to be essential for humanity regardless of the nation, the people, the culture, the politics, and traditions, is no longer valid and needs to be deconstructed and reformulated. This

“discovery,” therefore, led intellectuals and artists of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s to give up the ideal of building wonderful and perfect Modem Cathedrals in order to simply build whatever autochthonous/imperfect chapels they were able to build at a given historical moment. This ironic and unpleasant truth, that there is no truth or that there are many coexisting truths, forced contemporary thinkers, cultural developers, and artists to give up the task of wanting to transform all discourse into metanarratives, that is, of trying to make solid all that melts into air.

1.3. Third-World facing Modemity and Postmodemity; Frederic Jameson

One might begin this discussion by asking whether it is necessary to transpose two utterly

European and North American concepts — Modemity and Postmodemity, respectively — to the sphere of

Third-World nations. Apparently, such practice would empower even more the imperialist and capitalist impetus that led to the dichotomy of First and Third Worlds in the first place. According to a number of intellectuals, the answer would be “yes.” Not only is this transposition necessary, but also vital: one can no longer talk about Third-World nations without talking about the nations of the First World, in the same way as we cannot acknowledge the existence of Postmodemity without taking Modemity for granted. Third-

meant to be.

33 World nations exist, as such, solely because the West intruded in their History. If it had not been for their

"encounter” in the past, then we could have answered "no.” for such discussion would have indeed been unnecessary.

Let us. however, not forget to ponder what Latin America would look like, how it would be different from what it is. had Christopher Columbus never set foot on that part of the world. Or to imagine how things would now be in Africa if Americo Vespucci had never sailed around what we now call Cape

Hope in South Africa. The writers in Latin America and in Lusophone Africa have in fact all wondered about this issue, and have shown that this discussion does matter as they grapple with questions such as identity and national culture, decolonization of the mind, and post-colonial development. Frantz Fanon, in

The Wretched o f the Earth, emphasizes how important this task is when he demonstrates that the most heavily felt legacy of this encounter is colonialism, and decolonization can only take place if colonial practices are understood, fought against, and eliminated. In Resistance Literature. Barbara Harlow remarks that Third-World History is the History of Colonialism, precisely because colonialism is a western and modem invention.

In .All that is Solid Melts into .Air Berman reserves some chapters to the discussion of how the modem ideas that emerged in Renaissance and intensified in Enlightenment Europe found their way across the ocean and were implemented worldwide. Even though his discussion is limited to Modemity in Russia. he does refer to other Third-World nations as having been impacted by it. He states, however, that in the areas outside the West, "the meanings of modemity would have to be more complex, elusive and paradoxical” (174). By way of example, let us briefly see what Berman says about the relation between

Russia and European Modemity:

One of the cmcial facts about modem Russian History is that the economy of the Russian Empire was stagnating, and in some ways even regressing, at the very moment when the economies of the Westem nations were taking off and surging spectacularly ahead. Thus, until the dramatic industrial upsurge of the 1890s. Russians of the nineteenth century experienced modemization mainly as something that was not happening; or else as something that was happening far away, in realms that Russians, even when they traveled there, experienced more as fantastic anti-worlds than as social actualities; or else, when it was happening at home, as something that was happening only in the most jagged, halting, blatantly abortive or weirdly distorted ways. The anguish of backwardness and

34 underdevelopment played a central role in Russian politics and culture, from the 1820s well into the Soviet period. In that hundred years or so. Russia wrestled with all the issues that African. .Asian and Latin American nations would confront at a later date. Thus we can see nineteenth-century Russia as an archetype of the merging twentieth-century Third World. 175.( emphasis added)

Berman strikes a very important chord when he talks about the anxiety that the "underdeveloped"

nations felt after their encounter with the West. The First World served as a parallel, as a mirror, for

comparison. The Russians would not have noticed that their economy had stagnated or regressed, if it were

not for the possibility of seeing an economy that was functioning, apparently, in "much better" conditions.

The fact that they saw how things were in Europe enabled them to see how things were at home. They saw

their own image reflected in the mirror. In Latin America and in Africa, the situation was homologous.

Latin Americans and Africans were able to question their development, their destiny, only when they had

something with which to contrast it. And though the histories of development in Latin America and Africa

were different, the origin of the anxiety for change dates back to their encounter with Europe. In Latin

America, unlike in Africa, the Spaniards and the Portuguese systematized the colonial enterprise and

established vice-royalties which organized the colonies in such a way that they somewhat resembled the

socio-political and cultural structures of their European matrix, the metropolis.

The significance of that is that by the time Latin American countries gain their independence, a

local version of European nationhood already existed, whose bureaucratic and institutional structures of

control remained practically intact. The foundations of the Enlightenment model, in other words, had already been laid, and it was their desire and duty to give this new construction a face of their own. It was -

though with the fear of oversimplifying matters a bit too much - a question of imprinting their own image on the preexisting socio-political and economic model. In the novels by Manuel Scorza. which will be discussed in Chapter 3, these oversimplifications will be undone and a clearer picture of what post-

Independence Latin America looked like will be presented. In Africa, especially in Lusophone Africa, a process o f systematized co\omza.ùon never occurred. When Angola. Mozambique, and other Portuguese ex colonies became independent, they had to start from scratch, as will be illustrated in the novels by Artur

Pestana dos Santos or Pepetela, in Chapter 4.

35 These differences are seminal when it comes to understanding how Modemity and Postmodemity are transposed to these continents. Frederic Jameson emphasizes at least one difference we should notice here: the question of transition from a pre-modem society to a capitalist one. Berman has demonstrated how this transition took place in Europe, where the changes had been ignited by the Enlightenment Project.

Despite all the difficulties, it was proven that this transition from a feudal to a capitalist society was not only important but also possible. Now, would it likewise be possible to transform an ethnic community

(tribal system) into a capitalist one, in the case of Africa? And in the Latin American case, where a

European colony had been established, would the transition also be possible?

Jameson has an answer for that. He calls attention to the fact that "the nature and development of older cultures at the moment of capitalist penetration ' cannot be ignored, for "other modes of production

[...] must be disaggregated or destroyed by violence, before capitalism is able to implant its specific forms and displace the older ones" (69). In view of this, one can presuppose that capitalism penetrated in completely different ways in Latin America and in Africa, and that the way the Enlightenment Project was incorporated and adopted also varied quite significantly. According to Jameson, the transition in African societies and cultures "provide the most striking examples of the symbiosis of capital and tribal societies."

Here one is to assume that when he uses the word "symbiosis" it should, by no means, indicate that it was a smooth transition. In relation to Latin America, a third kind of development is able to evolve: "one involving an even earlier destruction of imperial systems now projected by collective memory back into an archaic or tribal" past (Jameson 69).

But it is also important to emphasize the similarities between the history of European modemization during the second phase, and the initial phase of modemization in the Third World. The dialectic with which the modem European man had to leam to live with in the 18th, and especially in the

19th centuries is emblematic of the conflict that ex-colonies will have to deal with in the 20th centurx'. This is noticeable in Latin America and Africa, where intellectuals also feel tom between their ancestral myths and knowledge, their "primitive" customs/rituals and the new ideas to which they are exposed either

36 through colonization or through their Western/classical education in Europe. Upon their return, when they finally take over important positions in the governments after independence’* and start the process of national reconstruction, they are haunted by the same questions as Faust was. They must make choices and ask themselves what to rescue from the rich welter of their traditional knowledge/experiences and what to leave behind, just as they had to select which of the western traditions to adopt and adapt to, and which ones to reject. In other words, they also had to work out a synthesis of ancient and modem values to suit the demands of the new era, the new socio-political and economic order. Just as Faust had to determine what of his older self to keep and what to discard, the new Latin American and African nations had to look back at their recent history and evaluate what part of it would be important to salvage and rescue before it completely vanished. This phase ofambiguity, which characterized Faust’s first and second phase, is emblematic of tlie reconstruction phases in which the Latin American and African writers engaged so vehemently after independence.

It is worth emphasizing another relevant aspect. Frederic Jameson raises an important discussion on the fact that canonical, western and capitalist forms of metanarrative have so brutally dichotomized the sphere of the private and the social, the political and the economic in Europe and in North America. In the

Third World, the dichotomy of private versus public has been appropriated constructively inasmuch as the private served an allegorical purpose for the emergence of national projects. The private story or "individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public Third-World culture and society" (69).

In fact, writers in the Third World have used these allegories in their national projects as a way to contribute to a historical analysis of past and present in their efforts to reconstruct their nations after the post independence wars in order to project a new future.

■* Most Latin American nations won their independence during the first and second quarters of the 19th century; the Lusophone African countries having been the last ones, who won their independence a century later, around the 1970s.

37 In general terms, though, the task of “weeding out” what is important to keep and what can be

discarded from this stifling and dichotomized social structure can be characterized as difficult and painful.

If on the one hand, the encounter with Europe has brought many beneficial contributions to this process, it

has also left many scars, as Fanon contends. Even at the dawn of the 21 century, quite a few scars are still

visible. Some of these include the inheritance of western values at the expense of ancient native traditions

and knowledge, the officialization of European languages, the implementation of capitalist modes of

production, or the formation of a new ruling class. Meanwhile, the native people were subjugated based on

racial inferiority, their ethnic identities nullified, and their history deformed.

If one remembers, though, that Modernity is inherently a dialectic process of self-criticism and

renewal, then the contradictions and ambiguity brought about with Modernity are bound to be addressed eventually. Groping after an ideal, a mythic resolution for their particular historical problems. Latin

American and Lusophone African writers take upon themselves the task of revisiting Modernity in the tropics, so as to make it workable for themselves. Instead of becoming the victims of history, their politically committed novels demonstrate that the anxiety with which they have lived for so long was forcing the new nations to experiment, to take risks and attempt to redirect their future towards progress and transformation. Manuel Scorza's. Pepetela's and Agualusa’s novels. Just like the novels of many other committed writers, illustrate that they have engaged in modernist and postmodernist processes of re presentation. and have, courageously, taken on the task of re-inventing their "brave new world."

Far from wanting to romanticize the overall process of Modernization and the role literature played in it. it is important to understand how Latin America and Africa face Modernity. Due to centuries o f

European domination, nations in Latin America and Africa (and other Third-World nations) begin facing

Modernity when the West is already in decline, as Spengler would say. That is. when the First World is reaching a stage where the rationalist myth has already delivered much more than it had promised, more than had been expected. The results include not only the two world wars, but also the Vietnam War. the

Cold War. the atomic bomb, ecological catastrophes, overpopulation, the alienation of the modem subject.

38 and more. In fact, we use terms such as "First and Third World," "Northern and Southern Hemispheres."

“developed and underdeveloped nations." because the idea of the world as an organic whole and a totalizing

unity can no longer be sustained.

This new stage reached by Europe and developed nations, which many refer to as

“Postmodemity.""^ can be characterized as the postindustrial or neocapitalist era. " for the modes of

production changed from the manufacturing of basic goods and heavy industry to the expansion of an

international financial market and services, and a highly technological and consumerist industry (computer

science, robotics, cybernetics). If in the First World, as Berman demonstrates, the idea of Enlightenment

through reason and will speeds up the developmental projects to such an extent that they almost get out of control and dissipate in a fast-forward movement and instantaneous reality of individualism, utilitarianism, consumerism and immediate gratification.^' then it is possible to anticipate the impact that modernization has as it is passed down as a second-hand and obsolete "commodity” to the Third World in the disguised

form o f an ideal.

Blinded, perhaps, by the glitter of the novelties of industrialization, the underdeveloped and developing nations in Latin America and Africa are anxious and no less eager to face Modernity, to finally

In "Pôs-modemidade e pastoral popular." P.P. Cameiro de Andrade calls attention to the impossibility, at this point in time, of coming up with a more definite term to name this era provisionally identified as "Postmodern." Through his attempt in defining modem poetry. Octavio Paz comes to the same conclusion as to the difficulty of finding definite terms to characterize and name this age. He says: "Hoy somos testigos. segiin todos los signos. de otro gran cambio. No sabemos si vivimos el fin o la renovacion de la modemidad. " (135).

It is Frederic Jameson who first equated post-industrialism or late-capitalism with postmodemity.See also “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinacional Capitalism" for a more detailed study on the impact "Postmodemity" has on underdeveloped or developing nations.

Instant gratification, satisfaction and the general idea that suddenly only the present is important, will have serious consequences in terms of what the neo-realist novel attempts to do. In the neo realist novel, writers are concemed with the re-writing of history from the perspective of the exploited masses, or those left outside history, outside the metanarrative. As a result, having to ignore the past and the future will end up contributing to the failure of the neorealist novel and to the emergence of other narrative attempts such as the real maravilloso, which will abandon the necessity of raising a mythico- historical consciousness in favor of a rather mythico-symbolic representation of reality.

39 take charge of their own future, and begin to invest in transforming their essentially agrarian economies into

more industrialized and developed nations through the import of know-how. technological and industrial

training, and foreign capital. Underneath the apparent illusion of Modernity, however, they only partially

realize that behind the apparent reality lurks an invisible reality of economic dependency, social inequality,

inflation, foreign debt, landlessness, lack of technical training, unemployment, hunger, poverty, and the

ever more rapid estrangement from traditional cultural forms and their native identity. The broader picture

of such complex and contradictory reality seems all too removed from the promising Western model to

which they aspired.

The new historical reality of development and modernization in the Third World seems less

enlightened, less sensible than ever before, for. within this new world order, it becomes harder to point the

finger and blame whoever is responsible for such a fragmented, discouraging, and chaotic reality. (This will

have serious consequences in terms of the narrative, for as John Beverly points out in Against Literature. the postmodern narrative can no longer accept the role of the realist [author] ity - Lyotard's metanarrative -

that invariably conforms to some kind of ideology and will therefore not serve as a truthful representation of minorities and/or other exploited collectivities.) Before, in Medieval times, the Church and the State could be blamed for the backwardness of Europe in the same way as Latin America and Africa could blame

Europe and its imperialistic mentality in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for the conditions of underdevelopment in which they found themselves.

But at the present, who can be blamed for the social, political and economic chaos of most Third-

World nations? Is it Modernity's fault? Is it the fault of those who have handed down know-how, technology, and the capital to speed up the modernization process in the Third World? Who can the Third

World target in its attack? To whom can complaints be forwarded? To international corporations? Foreign monetary funds? Or to corrupt national authorities and elites? Will the governments take the blame and shoulder the responsibility? The more the First World becomes postindustrial and postmodern, the more the global system of interrelations becomes depersonalized and faceless, and nations which are only

40 grappling with Modernity and only slowly learning how to crawl on their own. are the ones paying the highest price.

As Cameiro de Andrade contends. Postmodemity can be characterized as this new context, in which some, but not all. of the key ideas and projects of Modemity have been so exacerbated and blown out o f the initial envisioned proportions, that it is impossible to simply negate it or overcome it. Thus, it seems paradoxical that an era that has brought so much advancement in the arts and sciences is also an era that brought so much ambiguity, insecurity, and instability, for which not even philosophers or modem social and political scientists find a definite explanation. De Andrade affirms that the present moment calls for the

“emergência de novas formas culturais compatfveis com o novo momento do capitalismo" ( 100-101). But how does one do that? And is it enough to create new cultural forms that better suit this new era? There certainly is no answer for that, but artists are not choosing to tum their backs on reality and become apolitical or nostalgic as most of the modemists of the tum of the century and early twentieth century have chosen to do.

In order to find cultural forms of expression that are more compatible with this historical momentum, postmodem writers in the First World create fictions that play out all these discrepancies, inconsistencies, and disillusionments. These narratives no longer convey the belief in some greater ideal, in a metaphysical truth, and if solutions are proposed, they are limited to an individual, local, or regional reality with no intention to serve as a permanent paradigm for all. In the same way. Third-World writers - who realized that the Westem paradigm was "failing.” and who suspect that the new global order needed to be problematized and re-evaluated - decide to focus their attention on those aspects of the metanarrative unaccounted for by previous literary endeavors.

That is why Third-World writers who are committed to the general Project of Modemity eventually prefer to build new and perhaps less ambitious chapels in place of the crumbling Modem

Cathedral. As can be expected, this effort to build less pretentious chapels in place of the perfect Modem

Cathedral precipitates the transition from Modemity to Postmodemity in the Third World. That is. as this

41 new cultural architecture begins to take shape, the literally "incredible” metanarrative^* or cathedral has to

be substituted by what Lyotard calls "little narratives,” little stories, or what Pepetela calls "chapels” of our

own. The new chapels, no matter how perfect or imperfect they will tum out to be, will reflect the intent to

tell the story of resistance and the contributions of diverse communities and groups to their society's major

civilizational projects, and not vice-versa, as has been done hitherto.

Third-World nations are forced to face and deal with Modemity in a much shorter period of time

than Europe. While they are at it, they are already being exposed to the winds of Postmodemity, which,

ironically, are problematizing and deconstructing precisely those ideals that the Third World had set out to accomplish ever since Independence, when they set in motion their nation-building projects.

One has to understand "incredible” metanarrative in Lyotard's sense, that is, in the sense that one moves toward postmodemity as the "incredulity toward metanarratives " becomes explicit. And the incredulity toward the metanarrative becomes so overt, as critics such as Hayden White and others realize that the modem discursive practice and History itself has had to rely so strongly on narratives to be legitimated and acquire meaning.

4 2 CHAPTER 2

THE AESTHETICS OF MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY

Se habla mucho de la crisis de la vanguardia y se hà popuiarizado. para ilamar a nuestra época. la expresion la era postmodema.' Denominacion equivoca contradictoria. como la idea misma de modem idad. Aquello que esta después de lo modemo no puede ser sino lo ultramodemo: una modem idad todavia mâs moderaa que la de ayer. Los hombres nunca ban sabido el nombre del tiempo en que viven y nosotros no somos la excepciôn a esta régla universal. Llamarse postmoderno es una manera mâs bien ingenua de decir que somos muy modemos. (Paz 51 )

2.1. Representing the un(re)presentable; Jean-François Lyotard, Brian McHale. and Linda Hutcheon

2.1.1. Postmodemity ; Slackening or intensification of modem ideals

When one thinks of the aesthetics of Modemity and Postmodemity, one has to link it immediately with the idea of crisis and innovation. Modemity has changed our perception of the world, our

Weltanschauung - as Berman demonstrates in All that is Solid Melts into Air - and redirected (our) human energy toward new goals. The repercussions of centuries of transformations, of successful as well as failed attempts at getting closer to an ideal nation and improving society both at the basic and the superstructural levels have undoubtedly affected the role of modem artistic production. As was mentioned in Chapter 1 of this study, all aesthetic endeavors within the unfolding process of Modemity have accompanied these changes and have either reinforced or been critical of the legitimation mechanisms of Modernism, especially what Lyotard calls the “metanarrative.”

Inaugurating a tradition of mpture. artists have undertaken the challenges of the dialectic process set in motion since Faust first became tormented with the gap between the knowledge being generated, its forms of cultural and artistic representation, and the real social conditions of the pre-modem and early modem man. Lyotard opens his discussion on "What is Postmodemism?" by contending that in the 1960s

43 and 70s. practically three hundred years after Faust, the West reached a stage of exacerbation of modem ideals, an ultramodern stage, as Paz would contend, or even a stage of slackening in "the arts and elsewhere" (71). The reason for this supposed slackening is that everywhere, according to Lyotard, it is possible to signal a certain "reactionary" expression against the state-of-the-art of this exacerbated

"posf’modem aesthetics, as if a point of saturation had been reached.

However. Lyotard suggests that such reactions come only from those who feel that the most recent - ultra or postmodern - artistic expressions have lost sight of the critical role they were supposed to play in relation to the overall modem project. Such reactions come, in other words, from those who are discontented with the new cultural and economic order and who still faithfully hold onto the initial parameters of the Enlightenment Project without giving up the dream of building the modem cathedral.

These reactions come from those who have failed to realize that, as the modem project unfolded, so did some of its ideals, some of its concrete material and cultural accomplishments. Even though constructing the cathedral seems painful and sometimes even disastrous, the reactionary and rather conservative class wants to continue investing in it without rethinking its strategies and principles, without questioning the validity of holding onto a mythological and universal utopia that was conceived when the Enlightenment ideals emerged. Lyotard suspects that these are the voices of those who still see that the aim of the project of Modemity is the constitution of a socio-cultural unity within which all segments of society can take their place as in an organic whole. More specifically. Lyotard sees Jürgen Habermas 's voice in this negative reaction against the postmodern attitude or condition toward reality.

According to Lyotard, Habermas condemns the so-to-speak laissez faire attitude of intellectuals and artists from the 1970s onwards. They seem to have surrendered to a passive position of eclecticism, of transvangardism, in which “everything goes,” “everything and nothing is possible." where the desire for unity was given up and all human endeavors became compartmentalized, or atomized into private and independent searches, and where no aesthetic criteria seem to prescribe and mie the new order. In a song by the Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso. the words "Alguma coisa esta fora da ordem, fora da nova ordem

44 tnundial” hint at the fact that the new postmodern order somewhat lacks the order the modem man is used to and longs for.

The “lack of order’ within the new economic, political, and cultural order is due to the fact that

Modemity. according to Habermas, has allowed "the totality of life to be splintered into independent specialties which are left to the narrow competence of experts, while concrete individual experiences

‘desublimated meaning' and destmctured form, not as a liberation but in mode of that immense ennui which Baudelaire described over a century ago" (Lyotard 72). Habermas's words hint at an aesthetics of crisis and call for an awakening, for rethinking the function and instrumentality of art in this new

“slackened” phase of Postmodemity. What Lyotard detects in Habermas's critique is a "call for order, a desire for unity, for identity, for security, or popularity (in the sense of Offentlichkeit). of finding a public.

Artists must be brought back into the bosom of the community, or at least, if the latter is considered to be ill, they must be assigned the task of healing it" (Lyotard 73).

Such reactions against postmodemist experimentation, against transvangardisms. are condemned by Lyotard, who affirms that these expectations in relation to any new cultural productions smack of originality. Rather, they remit all forms of artistic practices back to the time in which realist art served the purposes of the bourgeoisie, which hid modem contradictions behind the façade of coherence brought forth by humanist liberalism. One needs only to think of Faust's pact with Mephistopholes in the second phase to be reminded of how Realism in the arts reinforced the interests of the bourgeoisie through language games and metanarratives that reinforced their ideologies.

This “manipulation” of representations of reality was meant to decrease the level of anxiety of the enlightened individual and to persuade the individual that “everything was OK” and that all his envisioned dreams could, in fact, become true. The portrayal of reality was positive in order to make the individual realize that the Enlightenment Project was advancing with no major flaws, with no major or irreversible consequences, and that this development was enabling humanity to get closer to the envisioned ideal of unity and truth.

45 2.1.2. The Modem Aesthetic of Realism as the Aesthetic of the Beautiful

Ironically, as Lyotard contends, this "realist” metanarrative "inherently possesses the power to derealize familiar objects, social roles, and institutions to such a degree that the so-called realistic representations can no longer evoke reality except nostalgia or mockery, as an occasion for suffering rather than for satisfaction" (Lyotard 74). In other words, the return to modem and realistic artistic representations, which Habermas is calling for. would actually pay a disservice to the community inasmuch as they do not give a truly "realistic" account of reality but help legitimate the oppressive power of the dominant class. It would be a step back in all the efforts made so far.

In Berman's account of Modemity. those who did not follow the rules of the metanarrative and questioned realist representations of society were precisely those who began the tradition of rupture, who engaged in the dialectic process of questioning the established rules (whether social, political, economic, or aesthetic) from within. Lyotard, therefore, attacks the "anti'-postmodemists who seem to be searching for a lost Golden Age of Enlightenment by contending that such individuals are not actually part of the tradition of rupture, for they are only reinforcing the late capitalist enterprises and the new ideological agenda of the postindustrial élite.

In reactions such as that of Habermas. Lyotard criticizes the fact that they fail to see how the metanarrative practices of Realism — a realist aesthetic of beauty — actually work in conformity with an aesthetic of power. The canon, then, contains art that conforms to the rhetoric of postindustrial capitalism, where aesthetic taste and Judgement are defined by their ability to disguise ideology, by their marketability and the profits they yield.

Lyotard makes a distinction between the aesthetic o f beauty- and the aesthetic o f the sublime. To show this distinction, he again resorts to an explanation of how knowledge is generated. Knowledge will emerge out of the conflict between "the faculties of the subject, the faculty to conceive of something and the faculty to present something" (77). Thus, knowledge will emerge depending on the subject s capacity to represent it. to make it "intelligible and if'cases’ can be derived from experiences that correspond to it." In

46 the same way, beauty will be derived if the work of art. without any prior rational conceptualization, elicits the sentiment of pleasure, that is. if it appeals to the principle ofuniversal a consensus "without realizing that behind it, or anterior to it, an ideological interest might be hidden" (77). And this is exactly what more realistic art has always done.

The “derealization" of reality appeals to a general universal consensus or ideal, because it generates pleasure and. perhaps, a sense of identification insofar as the subject feels that his goals are actually collective, and that they are being represented by the artistic endeavors subsidized by the élite.

Pleasure will come from the fact that this individual will believe that the élite in power, in the ruling position, is attuned to his needs, his projects, and necessities. The art subsidized by the élite, enabling the generation of collective pleasure, will sell more and. in tum, feed the capitalist machine. So, realist art will have a double role within capitalism: it will, firstly, disguise ideology by portraying a reality that is not that verisimilar, so that it will legitimate the power of the bourgeoisie. Secondly, by appealing to the common man, it will bring favorable economic results back to the capitalist enterprise. This is the effect of the aesthetic of beauty.

2.1.3. The Postmodern Aesthetic as the Aesthetic of the Sublime

The aesthetic of the sublime, of postmodern art. is derived from the double sentiment of pleasure and pain, in the sense that in the process of representation, the artist painfully realizes that the imaginary' ideal, the modem cathedral, is nothing but an w/irepresentable concept. And this realization is not hidden from the public! "We have the Idea of the world (the totality of what is)," says Lyotard,

but we do not have the capacity to show an example of it [...] We can conceive the infinitely great, the infinitely powerful, but every presentation of an object destined to make visible this absolute greatness or power appears to us painfully inadequate. Those Ideas of which no presentation is possible. Therefore, they impart no knowledge about reality (experience); they also prevent the free union of the faculties which give rise to the sentiment of the beautiful; and they prevent the formation and the stabilization of taste. They can be said to be unrepresentable. (78)

The relevance of this distinction for the present study is the fact that Lyotard is defending avant- garde attempts, the -isms that have struggled to deal with the unpresentable and struggled to unmask the

47 illusion of a possible presentability. AU modernist attempts have tried to expose the masked ideologies

behind the façade of the metanarrative, of the hegemonic art, ever since the beginning of Modemity, but

only now has the truth of unpresentability been assimilated and accepted among artists and social scientists.

This is what the art that apparently "slackened” is trying to convey. Lyotard defends these artistic

endeavors against Habermas' cry for art's return to the community. The latter praises the art that will

appeal to the senses and speak for and to the people, presenting the seemingly unpresentable products of

the imagination, of an Absolute ideal that might become true by means of forged "concrete" and realist

depictions. The aesthetics of the sublime opposes this view which Habermas seems to promote, for this

aesthetic is not nostalgic in nature and does not fake beautiful, perfect, ordered experiences. This is how

Lyotard distinguishes between the two aesthetic forms:

It allows the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents: but the form, because of its recognizable consistency, continues to offer to the reader or viewer matter It for solace and pleasure. Yet these sentiments do not constitute the real sublime sentiment, which is in an intrinsic combination of pleasure and pain: the pleasure that reason should exceed all presentation, the pain that imagination or sensibility should not be equal to the concept. (81 )

The aesthetics of Postmodemity, following and perhaps intensifying the tradition of mpture of earlier modemisms, will, therefore, deal openly with the question of un( re)presentab i I ity. But unlike the nostalgic sentiment still entertained by modemists, postmodemists will, first of all, accept the fact that reality is unpresentable, and. therefore, only alluded to; and secondly, they will problematize. if not altogether give up, the idea of a perfect modem cathedral.

2.1.4. Metafiction

As Berman points out, postmodemist artists abandon the dream of utopia and universal tmths found either in a long-gone past golden age or in the future. And while they adopt alaissez faire attitude, in reality they give up faith in any universal models. They will, according to Hutcheon and others who see things from a poststmcturalist perspective, accept the fact that there is no tmth to hold on to, that any

48 possible form of representation will always hide an ideological subtext.' Because of that, postmodemist endeavors will capitalize on metafictional discussions, which should not be confused with Lyotard's metanarrative. According to Linda Hutcheon, metafiction should be understood as the literature that fictionalizes reality at the same time as it discusses the nature of the language used, the context, and the conditions of production and reception. All of these elements, according to poststructuralists and new historicists. are always provisional, temporary, and paradoxical in nature, and they will lead to an endless process of deconstmction. (That is why some thinkers such as Habermas and Berman see this third phase as helpless and hopeless, fragmented, instantaneous, and ephemeral, leaving no traces of a stmcture or universal and reliable tmth to hold on to.)

This postmodem metafiction will problematize the shortcomings of language, of textual discourse practice, the flaws of narrative forms, of art’s historical and spacio-temporal significations, of art 's intmmentality, but not with the melancholy and nostalgic feeling with which the modemists lamented the tmth of un(re)presentability. In fact, while modemist art mourned the unattainable representability, postmodemists adopt the following motto: "Let us wage a war on totality: let us be witnesses to the unpresentable: let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name" - the honor, obviously, of postmodem artistic endeavors so often misunderstood (Lyotard 82).

2.1.5. Change of Dominant

Brian McHale also raises two important variants in the definition of a modem and a postmodemaesthetics that can be interwoven with Lyotard’s and Hutcheon’s aesthetic formulations. Paz also conveys that Postmodemity is

' Poststmcturalists should be understood as those who more rigorously question the issues brought up by Stmcturalism, concluding that meaning is not produced simply by the interrelation of texts or by elements of the linguistic stmctures themselves. Poststmcturalists will convey that meaning, signification, and representation are always unstable. According to the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Postmcturalism “pursues further the Saussurean perception that in language there are only differences without positive terms and shows that the signifier and the signified are, as it were, not only oppositional but plural, pulling against each other, and, by so doing, creating numerous deferments of

49 not really opposing Modemity. but reaching an advanced stage of Modemity. McHale's basic point is that from modemist to postmodemist fiction, there is a change ofdominant, that is. a shift from a more epistemological to a rather ontological questioning in the poetics of the latter. During the first, and especially during the second phase of

Modemity. as Berman contended. Faust was attempting to establish ways of relating to that new world order, to the new ethics that had been established since the advent of the Enlightenment.

Faust 's emblematic Angst was derived from the kinds of questions McHale identifies as epistemological: "How can 1 interpret this world of which 1 am a part?" and "What am 1 in it?" or questions such as these: "What is there to be known?" "Who knows it?" "How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?" "How is knowledge transmitted from one knower to another?” and "With what degree of reliability?" "How does the object of knowledge change as it passes from knower to knower?" and "What are the limits of the knowable?" These questions, evidently, remit to Lyotard's account on the generation of knowledge and how the subject relates to this knowledge of the world. They deal, moreover, with metanarrative practices and language games against which the various modemisms have struggled in the past and continue, with greater intensity, at the present moment.

However, questions such as "What is a world?" "What kinds of worlds are there, how are they constituted, and how do they differ?" or questions such as "What happens when different kinds of worlds are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between worlds are violated?" are questions that a

"postmodem” and “ultramodern” Faust would ask. We recognize them as those that high modemists asked around the tum of the century, according to Berman. But they were only taken to a level of absolute exacerbation in the 1960s and mainly 70s. when they were transferred to the realm of metafiction. where the nature of language and the text and other discourses were also brought into discussion. For example.

"What is the mode of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects?" and

"How is a projected world structured?” (McHale 9-12).

meaning, apparently endless criss-crossing pattems and sequences of meaning. In short, what are called ‘disseminations’.” (735)

50 McHale calls attention to the fact that even though these sets of questions can loosely be identified as “modemist” and “postmodemist” respectively, epistemological questions can also emerge within postmodemist questionings, and vice-versa. That is precisely why McHale argues that it all amounts to underscoring the one or the other as being dominant. “This in a nutshell is the function of the dominant; it specifies the order in which different aspects are to be attended to. so that, although it would be perfectly possible to interrogate a postmodemist text about its epistemological implications, it is more urgent to interrogate it about its ontological implications" (11).

This distinction between epistemological and ontological dominants will lead to an array of issues of extreme importance for this study, especially as one tries to understand how the Post-Independence

Latin American and the Lusophone African literatures position themselves in relation to Europe and in relation to their own collective imagination. These epistemological and ontological questions will help in our attempt at identifying modem writing in the ex-colonies and in understanding the way in which they have continued to reinforce the ideal of a modem cathedral. These questions will also help in understanding why and how specific writers relentlessly give up these ideals and begin experimenting with new forms of representation, developing literary strategies that move away from the typical modem representations. Why and how do they move closer to postmodern textual constructions such as theReal

Maravilloso narratives in their efforts to break with the inherited European literary tradition and with some of their own cultural and artistic presuppositions so as to find alternatives to the problem of presentability?

To examine the concepts (or variants) of an either epistemological or ontological order, this study- wili borrow its arguments mainly from Linda Hutcheon’s postmodemist poetics. Hutcheon presents palpable examples of literarytopoi and strategies adopted by writers in ex-centric positions within mainstream Europe and North America and writers of ex-colonial and peripheral Third-World nations that will be very useful for the present analysis.

51 2.1.6. The role of History and the parody

The importance of the role o f History in the transmission and perpetuation of Eurocentric values and the consequent need to rewrite History on the part of minorities and ex-centric subjects and/'or nations has become essential in any postmodern form of discourse. Contrary to what many anti-postmodernists would say, a historical revision does matter to postmodern artists, because it touches the question of who. what, and how past events were represented. Berman, as was seen, contended that in the 1960s and 70s. artists in the First World interrupted the dialogue with the past.

Linda Hutcheon. however, contends that the dialogue with the historical past is only being conducted differently. Now history is not seen as either contributing to the legitimation of the dominant ideological discourse or taking an oppositional perspective. That is. it either tells the story of those in hegemonic power positions or of those ignored by them, as is the case in modem fictional accounts.

Chapters Three and Four of this study will demonstrate that the modern realist narratives usually take the official historical versions as the backdrop of their fictions, thus legitimating the bourgeoisie's ideology.

The neorrealist narratives usually take the opposite angle, from a Marxist point of view, to narrate events from the side of the oppressed and unrepresented. This is verifiable both in the works of Peruvian author Manuel Scorza and the Angolan Pepetela. who recount historical events from the point of view of those forgotten in the main official discourses. Now. the more the neorrealists question their own modem fictional parameters and their own worldviews as writers, the morepostmodern their narratives become, and the more they problematize history inasmuch as they begin to go beyond the level of binary historical accounts which take an either-or position. They begin to recount the historv’ of the marginalized and silenced voices against the dominant discourse. Through this simultaneous movement, their epistemological versions are enriched by ontological questions examining what presuppositions underlie the textual production on both sides to demonstrate that each side construes its versions according to ideological principles, language systems, and socio-cultural and economic interests that will confer

52 meaning to their discourses. In that sense, the more these writers take up a postmodern perspective, the more their texts point to the fact that history and fiction are merely

Discourses, that both constitute systems of signification by which we make sense of the past (‘exertions of the shaping, ordering imagination'). In other words, the meaning and shape are notin the events, but in the sy’stems which make those past "events' into historical facts.' This is not a "dishonest refuge from the truth’ but an acknowledgement of the meaning-making function of human constructs (Hutcheon 89).

From the postmodern perspective, history is fictionalized, presuming that it is impossible to have a

single, essentialized, transcendent concept of "genuine historicity' (as Fredric Jameson desires: 1984a), no matter what the nostalgia (Marxist or traditionalist) for such an entity. Postmodern historicism is willfully unencumbered by nostalgia in its critical dialogical reviewing of the forms, contexts, and values of the past. (Hutcheon 89)

The significance of parodying past events, of representing history and thereby questioning what underlying values will permeate new historical accounts is of utmost importance for groups of people who have been alienated from their own past, their own mythical and historical memory, because, by regaining a sight of who they are, what their past was like, where they stand at the present, they might be better instrumentalized to revindicate their rights as participating socio-historicai beings. It is only through this process of affirmation of differences in identity and in interests that a people can move froma cunciencia vencida. to a conciencia mitica. to a conciencia histùrica. as will be pointed out in Chapters 3 and 4. Hutcheon contends that ex-centric artists and writers (feminists, blacks, homosexuals, all minorities) use the parody of historical events as a favorite postmodern literary strategy. The parody allows them to "‘come to terms with and to respond, critically and creatively, to the still predominantly white, heterosexual, male culture in which they find themselves. For both artists and their audiences, parody sets up a dialogical relation between identification and distance. Like Brecht's Verfremdungseffeckt. parody works to distance and, at the same time, to involve both artist and audience in a participatory hermeneutic activity " (Hutcheon 35). This

Verfremdungseffeckt. as will be discussed later, can loosely be translated as the effect of estrangement, which will be at the base of the marvelous real and magic realist accounts.

53 2.1.7. Pluralism

In their attempt to represent the unrepresentable, postmodern writers avoid binarist reprentations

of reality. They privilege pluralist accounts that will not simply favor “the other." the subaltern subject or

nation, vis-à-vis the westem. dominant, and centered subject, but the differences, the multiplicity and

heterogeneity of those whose identity had never even been acknowledged before. Again, instead of just

placing the oppressor against the oppressed, the native against the European, the laborer against the

landlord, one race against another, and so forth, the postmodern fictions will show that these frontiers

between one and the other are relative and mobile. Within each category, there are again other

subcategories of who is in the center and who is in an ex-centric and marginalized position.

The postmodemist narrative will “relativize" these positions and stretch the borders between one

and the other, and demonstrate the limits of actions and subdivisions within each group. Postmodem

metafictions will, as Hutcheon puts it. show that individuals are not subject to fixed identities, but rather to fluxes of identities that have to be given meaning according to gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexual

preference, education, social function, ideological orientation, among others. By revealing that even within

a minority or marginalized group individuals present their differences, one is able to break with the myth of

homogeneity and coherence perpetrated by metanarrative discourses of Modemity. That is why Lyotard

calls these modem discourses “narratives that derealize reality."

The ideas of center, of homogeneity and coherence are nothing but fictional truths; they are human

constmcts which the postmodem narrative addresses without idealization. In Pepetela’s novelMayomhe.

the myth of national unity and consensus in relation to how they are going to govern Angola after the War of Independence dispels any of the previously idealized and naive suppositions that, as long as they were to

free Angola from the Portuguese colonizer, reconstruction would be possible. Thus we can understand the author's metamorphosis from the initial novels to the most recent ones, in which he begins questioning his own belief in mythical truths. But this path or evolution is necessary. To be able to move from a conciencia vencida to a conciencia histôrica. one has to temporarily rely on myths, on truths, that will mythically

54 represent the collective goal, even if it is abandoned afterward, as Pepetela does, for need of a more radical, critical, and de-centralized representation of history .

"The loss o f faith in a centralizing impulse." according to Hutcheon. "is at the very base of postmodern narratives” (58. emphasis added). If this postmodern realization that not even the margins are cohesive in their interests leads to the general skepticism with which anti-modernists view the postmodemist deconstructive practices, or if even within a group individuals are fragmented and unable to organize and idealize changes, how can their conditions be improved? Those who long nostalgically for a rather modem posture toward reality - like Habermas - argue that in such a context of fragmented interests and provisional solutions for socio-political problems no stabilizing goals will ever be accomplished.

However, postmodemists will counterargue that to do this is to continue reaffirming illusionary myths of coherence and unity which would lead, once again, to the practice of power legitimation and to the manipulation of one class or group by another, (n order to avoid this, negotiation of meaning and of interests through constant dialogue has to occur in a literary practice, which Mihkail Bahktin terms dialogic imagination, which allows a multiplicity of voices to engage in a process of meaning negotiation.

2.1.8. Liminality

Another important postmodem narrative strategy is the amplification or thestretching o f spacio- temporal frontiers in narrative representations, which will allow the inclusion of the marginalized peoples, their worlds, realities, and myths in literary narratives as well as in all cultural and productive sectors of society. Even though this is a strategy found also in high modemist texts, it differs from them inasmuch as the postmodemists will not privilege one spacial or temporallocus over another, especially not with the sense of nostalgia for a lost space and'or time for which they long. The postmodem fiction will, rather, amplify or blur the limits between the imaginary and/or fantastic" and the realist and historical spaces and

" Notice that the stretching and blurring of borders will allow writers to enter the realm of fantastic, marvelous and magic realism.

30 times, or between "a unified biographically structured plot, and a decentered narration, with its wandering

point of view and extensive digressions” (Hutcheon 61 ).

This stretching of frontiers will allow the postmodern narrrative to unfold in at least two other

directions. First, as it challenges the notion of center with its authoritative and metanarrative forms of

discourse, the new narrative focus will automatically make room for the margins to speak. Thus, the

postmodern narratives will tend to fictionalize a plurality of socio-geograph ical and political spaces that

reveal the evergrowing globalization movements - the idea of a global village - for in this postindustrial and

postmodern age all the spaces can be reached instantly and simultaneously. Or it will focus on the de-

totalizing idea of representing only that which is local, regional, idiosyncratic, and different, that is. as

deviating from the normal pattems of representation, which is the case with José Eduardo Agualusa. as will

be seen in Chapter 5.

In these cases, the narrative plots might revolve around much smaller geographical and social

spaces, not pretending to ignore globalization. But this will be done to show that any action, any negotiation

of meaning, and any possibility of change has got to start within smaller units of reality within the multiple

realities there are to be dealt with. In so doing, the postmodern fiction is going to emphasize the need to

rethink any myth of centeredness and coherence, and any persisting idea that a broader and all-

encompassing discourse may be representative of the marginal voices.

The question of stretching the limits between spacio-temporal frontiers will lead also to the

emphasis of representation of less historical and rather mythical phenomena, which usually emerge from

the imaginary, from the cosmology of the ex-centric populations. In that sense then, the narratives will

capitalize on what Richard Priebe called "the mythic consciousness" instead of "the ethic consciousness."

The latter "tends to be realistic with little left unexplained by the action or the description, historical in its

specificity of time and place, didactic in its rendering of the human condition, and continuous in its rhythm as we are led from a clear beginning through a definite end" (5). The mythic consciousness, on the other

hand, will be expressionistic in style, "with much that is seemingly obscure and incomplete, ahistorical in

56 that we find a move towards time ab origine, problematic with regard to the human condition, and cyclical

in its rhythm, symbolic or real death being followed by ressurection" (5). Priebe goes on to say that

mythical consciousness is deployed by writers “within the context of the tradition of myths and rituals

found in their societies’’ where "writers [engage] in a process of constantly reinterpreting traditional myths,

not of creating new ones” to ensure the continuity between traditional verbal and nonverbal art and their

written literature ” (5).

As the frontiers of space and time are stretched to allow the ex-centric communities to be

represented in counter-hegemonic discourses, automatically their unrepresented and denied realms of

knowledge, folklore, and culture will be foregrounded, even when they are of lesser value compared to scientifically legitimated knowledge. This is the case of fantastic, magic, and marvelous real narratives, tales, and riddles. Precisely because of this stretching of frontiers, the so-called unlegitimated knowledge of magic, marvelous and fantastic origin will finally gain its space within the postmodern narratives. Priebe makes this very clear when he compares the function of proverbs and riddles. Proverbs are usually

legitimated forms of knowledge, with a clear didactic function of bringing an answer to a specific problem, while riddles are symbolic and allude to a problem that will only acquire relevance to a specific situation if its symbolism is deciphered.

2.1.9. Against the allegory

In addition, this new decentralized narrative focus will treat the closure o f the novel in a different manner. Instead of presenting a closed and fixed solution for the drama developed in an allegorical plot

(eg., foundational narratives), writers will usually create open-ended or multiple sending stories which require readers to construct their own endings, to give the plot the direction they prefer according to their position in relation to the text’s reality. Thus, fragmentary and provisional endings defy the readers' usual belief that eventually things will come to a perfect conclusion and will remit to a perfect unit, to a neatly

57 packaged solution. The reader's participation can be identified as the signifying process of the making

sense process to which Hutcheon refers.

The postmodern individual is called to participate in the negotiation of meaning, in the direction the

future will take. More importantly, the postmodern individual/reader is led to realize that this negotiation is

not easy, and that whatever solution he comes up with might be contested and challenged by others who

have conquered the same right to construct their own meaning. Contemporary theories and fictions will

attempt to show precisely this, that within this new postmodern context, the individual will always have to

redefine his position, his values, and his truths. Even the apparently "centered" individual is multiple and

fragmented and is constituted of dialogical forces or ideologies which are in constant tension and conflict,

as Mikhail Bakthin puts forth in his concept of heteroglossia.

Before passing on to the discussion that situates the Real Maravilloso narrative within the aesthetics

of Postmodemity, it is necessary to reiterate that any of the variants presented above should not be

understood as strictly belonging to or characterizing either the modem or the postmodem narrative. The

spirit with which Berman, Hutcheon, McHale, and even Lyotard attempted to characterize the adventure of

Modemity including its artistic expressions cannot be defined according to a set of inflexible rules or

principles that attain a mythical and metanarrative status in our lives. That would signify that we have completely missed the point of what Modemity set out to accomplish in our way of understanding and

representing our reality. This modem spirit is dialectic, is supposed to be in constant revision, and to be constantly informing, permeating, constructing and deconstructing our projects, our ideals, our ways of dealing with reality. Therefore, it should be clear that even if we are now immersed in what some prefer to

identify as the "postmodem" era and others as the "ultramodem" era, the modem spirit is still present.

This spirit is still here, and with a specific function: to remind the human being to always question his basic assumptions of certainty, universality, truth, and coherence. Whatever adventure man sets out to experience as an individual, or as part of a social group or even a nation, has got to be questioned from within so as to understand the totalizing concepts and codes he is utilizing to shape his imagination.

58 Whether in the First World or in the Third World, or whether in a centric or in an ex-centric position;

whether envisioning a perfect modem cathedral or a tiny little chapel or hut. man must become conscious

of being moved by his desire, his capability for reason and his will to accomplish things. This spirit also

reminds the human being that whether he is engaged in politics, in art. in science, in the basic production

assembly lines, cultivating a plot of land in the countryside or even unemployed and marginalized of any

means of production, he can no longer afford to entertain the belief that he can choose to either participate

in this reality or be left alone.

Man is a part of reality and the only ideological choice he actually has is to speak or to be spoken for

by means of discursive practices that are bound to be deconstructed and melt into air. If man no longer

entertains the idea of a solid truth but knows that any truth he holds on to will be only temporary, then the

sense of tragedy which haunted the modem man will no longer lead to the sensation that he has ‘fallen

from the sacred.”

2.2. The Real Maravilloso narrative as a postmodern aesthetical principle

The number of studies that deal with marvelous real, magical realist, and fantastic narratives is not only significant but also indicative of the fact that in literature the necessity of transcending the realist and neorrealist accounts of reality was long overdue. Moreover, it is indicative that the kind of narrative mode that attempts to focus on the less visible and material aspects of reality has conquered and guaranteed its space within the literary canon in spite of the fact that it emerged outside the hegemonic literary circles. But even though the terms "magic.” "marvelous.” and ""fantastic” were initially used to signify different phenomena of representation, little by little, they have started to be used interchangeably and to refer to all artistic endeavors that clearly wanted to re-present that which is different.

This can be verified in most of the critical examinations dealing with this subject, from Angel

Flores’s 1954 article “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction” and Luis Leal's 1967article "El realismo magico en la literatura hispanomaericana." to more recent studies such as Irlemar Chiampi'sEl

59 Realismo Maravilloso or Leonardo Padura’s Lo Real Maravilloso: Creadon y Realidad, as well as Lois P.

Zamora’s and Wendy B. Paris’s Magical Realism - Theory. History. Community, among many other studies which do not really separate each term in its own little compartment. Because it is a mode in which the marvelous, the magic, and the fantastic intersect, it can be seen as a very large umbrella that has room to encompass any mode of expression whose ultimate goal is to present reality from new angles and to counter the metanarrative modes of representation engaged in reinforcing the ideological interests of the dominant class.

2.2.1. Origin: Roh and Carpentier

Before examining how the Real Maravilloso can be understood as part of the postmodern aesthetics, it may be useful to briefly back up and see how the term “Magic Realism” originated and how it intersects with Carpentier’s formulation on the role ofReal Maravilloso in Latin American Literature.

Ironically, the origin of the term “Magic Realism” can be traced back to artistic endeavors in Europe, more specifically in Germany, where Franz Roh. in 1925. proposed to name what emerged after Expressionism as Nach-Expressionismus. Magischer Realismus. Roh used it in reaction to the abstract expressionist tendency verified in painting at the dawn of this century. He believed painting should reengage in more realist portrayals of reality, stating that the word “magic” should be opposed to the term “mystic." for Roh wanted to demonstrate that “mystery does not descend to the represented world, but rather hides and palpitates behind it” (Zamora and Paris 16. emphasis added). What Roh said then, in his essay which was translated into Spanish in 1927. by Ortega y Gasset's Revista de Occidente under the title “Realismo magico. post expresionismo: Problemas de la pintura europea mas reciente." reminds us very much of what

Alejo Carpentier expresses in the prologue to his bookEl reino de este mundo (1949). That is. Latin

American writers do not need to look for the uncanny, the marvelous, the fantastic, and the magic outside reality, nor fabricate it artificially as the modemists and surrealists did. because the marvelous and the magic reside in the historical and natural reality of Latin America itself. This is what Carpentier states:

60 Lo real maravilloso se encuentra a cada paso en las vidas de hombres que inscribieron fechas en la historia del continente y dejaron apellidos aiin llevados: desde los buscadores de la fliente de la etema juventud. de la aurea ciudad de Manoa, hasta ciertos rebeldes de la primera hora o ciertos heroes modemos de nuestras guerras de independencia de tan mitologica traza como la coronela Juana de Azurduy” ( 98).

2.2.2. Estrangement and extraordinariness

In another of his articles on Real Maravilloso. namely in “Baroque and the Marvelous Real.” that

was first presented as a lecture in 1975 and then published in La novela hispanomaericana en visperas de

un nuevo siglo, in 1981, and re-edited in Magical Realism, by Zamora and Paris. Carpentier also states that

the word ‘marvelous’ has. with time and use. lost its true meaning, and lost it to the extent that words marvelous’ and ‘the marvelous" produce a conceptual kind of confusion [...] Dictionaries tell us that the marvelous is something that causes admiration because it is extraordinary, excellent, formidable. And that is joined to the notion that everything marvelous must be beautiful, lovely, pleasant, when really the only thing that should be gleaned from the dictionaries' definitions is a reference to the extraordinary. The extraordinary is not necessarily lovely or beautiful. It is neither beautiful nor ugly; rather, it is amazing because it is strange. Everything strange, everything amazing, everything that eludes established norms is marvelous. (101)

As such, the marvelous and extraordinary can be equated to Lyotard’s asthetics of the sublime in which the artist

attempts to represent the unrepresentable.

2.2.3. Hidden behind the metanarrative

The fact that Roh, the surrealists, and Carpentier each felt the need to re-invest reality with what

eludes the established norms, that is, with magic and marvel, is directly connected with what has been stated

in Chapter 1, that while the ideas of Modemity were implemented throughout the scope of four centuries, the

emerging bourgeoisie attempted to legitimate its power through metanarratives that focused and emphasized

those aspects of reality that needed to be seen, that ideologically would reinforce their interests. By so doing, all the elements in reality that could compromise the Project of the Enlightenment as well as the

bourgeoisie’s nationalist agenda and its legitimacy in power were left out of hegemonic forms of representation. Thus, the socio-cultural and historical reality of the underclasses, the marginalized and the powerless was strategically ignored or hidden behind the dominant discourses.

6 1 Thus, it is not difficult to see why the Real Maravilloso may be identified as an antagonic form of discourse utilized by ex-colonial Third-World nations as well as by other minority groups within the First

World as a tool to represent what had been left unrepresented. It is likewise easy to understand why Real

Maravilloso narratives may be identified as a postmodern aesthetic procedure. Not that Real Maravilloso narratives only emerged in the 1960s and 70s, during the period which the social and cultural scientists started to identify as Postmodemity. But because Real Maravilloso clearly pertains to the tradition of rupture inasmuch as it really did become an alternative and critical form of representation of reality that countered canonical and hegemonic fiction.

Therefore, approximately since the turn of this century, the attempts to ensure a voice to those that are different, subaltern, and ex-centric, have intensified to such a point that postmodern literature is acknowledged as that which destabilizes any rigid conventions, any totalizing structures of meaning, namely, the metanarrative and its varied discourses of power legitimation. According to Hutcheon. the increasing uniformization of mass culture is one of these totalizing forces that postmodernism challenges without denying. It really attempts to reaffirm the difference, and not the homogeneous identity. It can be said, obviously, that the concept of difference itself involves a typically postmodern contradiction. What is different, contrary to what is considered a non-identity has no exact opposition against which one can define it.

2.2.4. Multiplicity of representation

In modem literary attempts, the totalizing discourses were countered by the simple opposition of

terms of the binary constructs (identity/ non-identity, elite/ mass, homogeneous/ heterogeneous, visible/

invisible, center/ margin). The postmodern discourse will capitalize on the varied forms in which the

alternative (second) part of any of the binary terms manifests itself. "Postmodern art." according to

Hutcheon, "is always aware of difference, difference within any grouping, difference defined by

contextual ization or positioning in relation to plural others” (61). Therefore, it is crucial to establish the

62 ways in which the Real Maravilloso. the magic realist, and fantastic narratives help deconstruct the metanarratives and ensure the representation of the multiple forms of otherness, and not just otherness vis-

a-vis the center.

2.2.5. Spontaneous or artificial phenomena

In the two aforementioned articles. Alejo Carpentier sets out to formulate a Latin American literary aesthetic based on how the marvelous, the magic, and the baroque intersect and how they are observable in the American

Continent. Particularly in the first article, in which he defines the marvelous real as an inherently Latin American phenomenon, he begins by showing how the magic, the wondrous, the fantastic, and the marvelous are tentatively expressed in European art. especially in the surrealists’ attempts. He concludes from their experiments that there the marvelous representations are fabricated, "obtenidos con trucos de prestidigitaciôn. reuniéndose objetos que para nada suelen encontrarse." He observes this as characteristic both of surrealist painting and of European literature in general, where "a fuerza de querer suscitar lo maravilloso. o todo trance, los tramaturgos se hacen burocratas. Invocando por medio de formulas consabidas que hacen de ciertas pinturas un monôtono baratillo de relojes amelcochados. de maniquies de costurera. de vagos monumentos talicos. lo maravilloso se queda en parâguas o langosta o mâquina de coser. o lo que sea, sobre una mesa de disecciôn. en el interior de un cuarto triste, en un desierto de rocas" (Carpentier

95-6).

2.2.6. Production and Reception

In the second article Carpentier also digresses about the way the marvelous is represented in the architecture, in the history and in the cultural expressions in Eastern Europe and the East. He concludes from what he sees there that the representation of the marvelous cannot be reduced only to a concern in relation to how the different and the marvelous are produced. It is a two-way street that needs to be concerned also with the way in which the different and marvelous are perceived. This is an important

63 question that relates directly to the postmodern concerns raised by new historicist, poststructuralist, and metalinguistic theories that deal with the question of reception.

Reception is a key issue. It is not sufficient to be able to produce/ represent something from a new angle if the receptor is unable to see it. decode it. and make meaning out of it. Thus. Carpentier evokes the same questions that postmodernists do. on the importance of understanding what values, worldviews, socio-cultural but also linguistic and textual codes are operating simultaneously in order for the art object to produce meaning. In other words. Carpentier brings to the fore his preoccupation with ontological questions, which according to McHale is a postmodernist concern. Carpentier raises ontological questions after realizing that he sometimes is unable to completely grasp the meaning of a specific artistic expression, because he lacks knowledge that is usually bound to the context of specific civilizations culturally, socially, politically, and linguistically.

In his descriptions of the distant places in Eastern Europe and the Orient. Carpentier repeatedly emphasizes that the knowledge of language, texts, and history are indispensable for the true understanding and representation of a given culture. About China, for instance. Carpentier affirms that "Me falta. para ello. un entendimiento de los textes. " (85). And about Russia he contends the following: “Pero quien lo quiso entender. lo entendio a médias, porque desconocia el idioma o los idiomas que alii se hablaban (87).

The fact that as a receptor/ recipient Carpentier is not able to fully understand and appreciate given artistic expressions does not mean that appreciating art - whether a novel, a poem, a painting, a sculpture or an architectural creation - without any previous epistemological and ontological knowledge is a worthless experience. On the contrary. But in the cases in which the receptor is unable to participate in the construction of meaning, he might be exposed to an object that is ideologically legitimating the dominant class' point of view. Even when the experience might be pleasurable, it is an aesthetic experience that is referred to as the aesthetic of beauty, and not that of the sublime. The receptor misses to grasp what it conceals, what is only alluded to. and what is hidden behind the façade of the visibly representable.

64 Being handicapped in one of the many variants that helps him confer meaning upon things.

Carpentier fails to understand in which way a certain artistic expression tries to bridge “un pasado siempre suspendido entre los extremos polos de lo real y lo irreal, de lo fantastico y lo comprobable. de la conseja y del hecho” (90). Moreover, the receptor ends up being deprived of learning about that which, within a given culture, is considered ex-centric, subaltern, critical, and. many a time, subversive (against the hegemonic order). Thus, even if such artistic experiences generate pleasure and allow us to appreciate beauty, they become monolithic, unilateral, and derealizing to the "handicapped" receptor, who cannot understand the complex intertwining of elements with which he could confer meaning to the artistic "text.”

2.2.7. Referentiality and representation

As was said earlier. Carpentier writes the article on the Real Marax-iliuso in order to discuss the state-of-the-art of Latin American Literature and to demonstrate that the Marvelous Real is at the very core of Latin America’s literary aesthetics: "?Pero que es la historia de America toda sino una cronica de lo Real

Maravilloso?” (99). Therefore, the relevance of the question of reception is self-evident. If Latin America can be considered the chronicle of the marvelous real per se. is this clear to those who have attempted to discover it? How have the outsiders "read" Latin America? How has the European colonizer decoded what he has encountered in Latin America as well as in other parts of the world where he established its overseas empires? How has he understood the ex-centric cosmogonies - the rituals, myths, customs, values, and principles - that are at the base of a multiplicity of non-European civilizations, and which looked so different from what the European man was used to? How did the European man construct meaning out of what he was able to see in these places?

In what way have the European narratives of the encounter, such as those of Christopher

Columbus. Bernal Diaz, and Hemân Cortez apprehended and expressed the broad and complex geographical, cultural, and social contexts of the Americas? What cultural, linguistic, historical, and textual referents did Europeans use to conclude, for instance, that the first Indians they encountered in the

6 5 Americas were “cannibals” and needed to be evangelized, and that the first Africans they met were

“barbaric” and “primitive.” but still suitable to work in the mining labor camps in their African colonies or as slaves in Europe and in the Americas? What referents did the Europeans use to make sense out of what they saw and experienced abroad? Did the European languages suffice to express a new and different reality? How did they express it? How did they understand and judge the other's difference and extraordinariness? The first chroniclers, from their early modem perspective, certainly were not able to entertain what Hutcheon calls a postmodern preoccupation, that is. a concern to leave their eurocentric world of reference aside in order to expressthe other from (an)other. from the other point of view.

From his observations Carpentier realizes that not only did Europeans use their own codes to confer meaning upon the other, but that the other helped Europeans to confer meaning upon their own eurocentric reality. It was in their overseas colonies that they were able to really give meaning to their

Christian idea of Paradise, for instance. It was also there that they found that the images fictionalized in their romances of chivalry were not really fantastic and marvelous, but real and materialized in front of their eyes: In Latin America. Bernal Diaz, in his attempt at describing what he saw there.

sin sospecharlo. habia superado las hazanas de Amadis de Gaula. Belianis de G recia y Florismarte de Hircania. Habia descubierto un mundo de monarcas coronados de plumas de aves verdes. de vegetaciones que se remontaban a los origenes de la tierra. de manjares jamâs probados. de bebidas sacadas del cacto. y de la palma. sin darse cuenta aùn que. en esse mundo. los acontecimentos que ocupan al hombre suelen cobrar estilo propio en cuanto trayectoria de un mismo acontecer (Carpentier 93).

Europe really begins to understand itself as it sees, writes, or reads about the other, for then it sees itself from a different perspective. De Certeau explains what takes place in the encounter narratives as a

“spatializing operation which results in the determination or displacement of the boundaries delimiting cultural fields (the familiar vs. the strange). In addition, it reworks the spatial divisions which underlie and organize a culture. For these socio-ethno-cultural boundaries to be changed, reinforced, or disrupted, a space of interplay is needed, one that establishes the text's difference” (68).

66 2.2.8. Otherness and Difference

This spatializing operation, then, works both ways. As a means for the center subject to understand the ex-centric one. but also for the center subject to learn about himself. Furthermore, it points to the important fact that even the ex-centered subject becomes involved in this interplay of establishing and identifying its difference. As he gets to know the Europeans who colonized, dominated, and exploited him. and even those inside his own nation who are in dominant positions, the marginalized subject begins to realize his own difference. That is when the need to establish his identity emerges. This is precisely what

Carpentier calls for when he talks about a Latin American aesthetics, saying that the marvelous real is that which defines their otherness.

If the construction of a text helps the individual to know the other and himself, then the literature produced in the periphery also needs to engage in the process of self-definition by understanding what it is about. Thus, what Carpentier seems to be arguing is the (re)discovery of the marvelous, the fantastic, and the different inherent in Latin America’s own historical, geographical, and cultural reality. Committed to a perspective that Latin American writers do not have to emulate European artistic styles and narrative modes, precisely because through these means the modem European man defined them, they have to strive to get closer and closer to an autochthonous means of representation.

In order not to reinforce the old complex of inferiority and the new forms of colonialism and dependency, Carpentier indirectly exhorts Latin American writers to continue in their own tradition of rupture by exploring and creating modem ideals that will pursue the improvement of human conditions and the optimal development of their own national projects through their own language and their own mythological and historical reality. The modem tradition of mpture teaches us that the model for the

European cathedral needs to be questioned and designed over and over again through a dialectic process of constant re-deflnition. The same is true for all other nations and minorities that seek to establish their identity. The Latin American cathedrals, as well as the cathedral in Africa and other parts of the world.

6 7 need to define themselves according to their uniqueness and difference by looking at their own history, their own culture and mythology. And who can do that?

2.2.9. Mythical and historical consciousness

Carpentier argues that no outside artist is actually able to really grasp and really depict the marvel of any given reality without understanding the meaning of that which is hidden behind the façade: the people’s mythology, history, superstitions, beliefs, languages, and folklore. Carpentier illustrates this point using André Masson’s sketches of Martinican flora, to demonstrate how Masson did not see the truth, the whole, and the marvelous behind the apparent images: “La maravillosa verdad del asunto devoro al pintor. dejandolo poco menos que impotente frente al papel en bianco. ” (96) says Carpentier. ironically, about

Masson’s drawings. On the other hand. Carpentier also affirms that “Tuvo que ser un pintor de America, el cubano Wilfredo Lam. quien nos ensenara la magia de la vegetaciôn tropical, la desenfrenada creacion de formas de nuestra naturaleza - con todas sus metamorfosis y simbiosis ~ en cuadros monumentales de una expresiôn ûnica en la pintura contemporânea” (Carpentier 96).

This relevant point in Carpentier’s notion of who can. in fact, represent the unrepresentable is intimately linked with the metaphor of the perfect modem cathedral that has been suggested throughout this study. In "Baroque and the Marvelous Real." published in Zamora and Paris's collection on Magical

Realism, Carpentier states that it is the duty of Latin American writers to uncover the extraordinary inherent in Latin America. And if Latin America is essentially baroque, it is in a baroque manner that this reality should be depicted. “If our duty is to depict this world, we must uncover and interpret it ourselves ” (106). contends Carpentier. Our reality will appear new to our own eyes. Description is inescapable, and the description of a baroque world is necessarily baroque, that is. in this case the what and the how coincide in a baroque reality.

I cannot construct a so-called classical or academic description of an arbol de la vida from Oaxaca. I have to create with my words a baroque style that parallels the baroque of the temperate, tropical landscape. And we find that this leads logically to a baroque that arises spontaneously in our literature. (Zamora 106)

68 2.2.10. Against the Modem Enlightenment Cathedral

That Latin Americans have to represent their reality in a baroque fashion explains why, not only

Latin America but all nations that have struggled to break free from the European metanarratives have

failed in their attempts at representing their own cathedrals in their own image. The image of the

monumental European modem cathedral was practically conceived as the Enlightenment Project was put

into motion. It is, therefore mainly classicist in its features, for it always departs from a "central axis from

which the frontispiece slope[s] away to either side, dividing the entablature in two. Each column ha[s] its

lateral axis, and each axis [is] proportionally removed from the central axis in a kind of Pythagorean cross-

section that divide[s] the building into equal and symmetrical parts” (92) Carpentier goes on demonstrating

that this European classicist architecture presents "empty spaces, naked spaces, spaces without

omamentation are in and of themselves as important as adomed spaces of the shafts of grooved columns. If

we begin to look at those great naked planes in the Parthenon or Versailles, their boundaries create a sort of

geometrical harmony in which filled and vacant spaces are equally important.” (Zamora 92-3).

This geometrical harmony which classicist architecture seeks to maintain is the epitome of the

Enlightenment mentality, in which the equilibrium between reason and willpower is sought. The modem,

enlightened individual is supposed to develop the ability to maintain in symmetry and in balance his need

to create, to develop by means of his rational capacity and his right to do it without impairing the freedom

and the individual right of others to do the same. That lies at the heart of the modem enlightened spirit with

which Faust enthusiastically engages in developmental projects to create the perfect nation, the perfect civilization and arrive at utopia. The empty spaces of classicist architecture emerge precisely because the

modem individual, according to the bourgeoisie's totalizing schemes, needs to learn not to fill the spaces with unnecessary, irrelevant, and subjective psychological weaknesses that prove to be unproductive for the overall process of modernization. In other words, the individual has to learn to maintain the tension

between his inner desires and the collective project.

69 This means that the modem individual has to abandon the welter of rituals, values, and principles that are of autochthonous or idiosyncratic nature in favor of rather nationalistic values brought forth by the bourgeoisie. Thus, the spaces will be left empty, naked, not filled with the mythological, the religious, and the folkloric elements of culture that would capitalize on the difference and not on the homogeneity of a given society.

2.2.11. The autochthonous cathedral

In baroque architecture the exact opposite happens. It is a style that welcomes the idiosyncratic, the autochthonous and the different to surface and fill the spaces of what is usually kept inside the individual's imaginary. The unconscious, the magic, the uncanny, the extraordinary, that which is desired and repressed, is actually released in baroque art. The baroque attempts to open space to the unrepresentable and invisible, because it allows the borders of representation to be stretched. This is how Carpentier describes baroque architecture:

We have, on the other hand, the baroque, a constant of the human spirit that is characterized by a horror of the vacuum, the naked surface, the harmony of linear geometry, a style where the central axis, which is not always manifest or apparent [...]. is surrounded by what one might call ■proliferating nuclei.' that is. decorative elements that completely fill the space of the construction, the walls, all architecturally available space: motifs that contain their own expansive energy, that launch or project forms centrifugally. It is art in motion, a pulsating art.an art that moves outward and away from the center, that somehow break through its own borders. (Zamora 93. emphasis added).

Baroque architecture can be read as marvelous real art. inasmuch as it will be with the marvelous, with the magic and the fantastic that the naked spaces of representation will be filled. Now. that does not necessarily mean that all art that fills the spaces with these elements will be baroque. Carpentier suggests this as the art form with which Latin Americans should commit themselves. He suggests that if Latin Americans have to find their own mode of representation, let it be the baroque, since it will be an autochthonous form of expression that will allow Latin Americans to establish their difference, their identity, their own discourse.

Each Third-World country will have to find its own forms of representation, its own architectural style, in

70 order to create its own cathedral, no matter how different it will end up being from the Enlightenment

Cathedral from which they started off.

71 CHAPTER 3

EXPLOSION OF THE MODERN CATHEDRAL;

FLAWS IN THE METANARRATIVE

3.1. The Enlightenment Project in Latin America

3 .1.1. Foundational discourses

As Doris Sommers explains in her book Foundational Fictions. The national romances in Latin

America, the love story or romance sentimental was adopted as the foundational fiction narrative mode in

Latin America soon after the various nations won their political independence from Spain in the early 19'*' century. Coinciding with Fredric Jameson’s theory that all Third-World narratives are necessarily allegorical (69),' Doris Sommers verifies in her analysis of the first Latin American novels that most of them served as allegories for the nation-building process because they fully ascribed to the idea of nation as it was conceptualized since the Enlightenment.

As Homi Bhabha states in Nation and Narration, the concept ofnation is a modem one. for the idea of self-definition and self-government did not flourish in Europe until the late 1700s and did not intensify until late into the 19th century. In most cases, the definition of a nation-state was based on elements such as territor)'. race, language, culture, and/or religion. These elements would either bring

'It is worth noting that Aijaz Ahmad, in his critique against Jameson states that perhaps what Jameson wanted to affirm is that only those texts which give us the national allegories can be admitted as authentic texts of Third World Literature (Ashcroft 82).

72 together or disrupt a given community. Bhabha states, moreover, that in this process of unification, the

nations, more often than not, ended up including more than excluding the aforementioned elements in order

to accommodate the multiplicity of subgroups and communities within a nation. Many a time, there already

existed a sense of identification, a sense that some of these elements were ' common denominators" shared

by a larger group within a sometimes imprecise territorial demarcation. In such cases, the definition of the

nation was à posteriori, that is. it was officialized or legitimated after the nation had already existed for

some time. In such instances, the nation was not idealized first and then created based on a collective

imaginary.

In Latin America, as a legacy of the discovery and the conquest periods, the new nations were

established according to the geo-political frontiers of the vice-royalties. They had been defined à priori, so-

to-speak. by the colonizer. Thus, the question of race, religion, language, or culture were in no way decisive

in the process of decolonization. If one takes Peru as an example, when it became independent, a variety of

different native communities inhabiting the territory were not excluded or expelled. As long as they were

inside this previously defined territory of the vice-royalty, they belonged to Peru. Regardless of their will, race, religious beliefs, and their cultural and linguistic tradition, they all suddenly became Peruvians. It was. of course a process of cultural subjugation, an usurpation of rights over lands; but still, it was an apparent process of inclusion rather than exclusion (this was. at least, what the modem ideal seemed to convey!).

Thus, as the vice-royalties became nations, the immediate need was for the consolidation of a nationalistic rhetoric, for an officialized version of the nations's legitimacy. What the new nations had to do was to put in motion projects of cultural, economic, and political development so as to prove that these nations could in fact stand on their own and indeed earn the status of modem independent nations, regardless of the complexity of elements and the contradiction of interests within the territorial confines.

The issues to be dealt with in the newly-formed nations revolved mainly around the faulty colonial system which the new nations inherited, such as the rigid intemal structure of dichotomies between nobility and

73 gentility, traditional/ oligarchic criollos and liberal criollos (Lizardi. Altamirano, Lastarria, Blest G an a.

Sarmiento. Palma), or criollos and native Indians and African slaves. Spanish-speaking communities and speakers of vernacular languages, which had always been struggling for hegemony and were now. suddenly, drawn together under an apparent common utopian goal.

How to resolve these contradictions was the issue at stake. Thus, these "artificially created" nations had to devise a plan of unification, an à posteriori national discourse that would dissolve these totalizing bynarims. A unifying element of identity had to be produced to make the link between the imported European socio-political model of the colonial period and the multiplicity of communal experiences and traditions of the masses. The solution for the invention of a national myth came with the idea of a "love affair" between the native and the colonizer. It would enable the multiple communities of interest to find elements of identification and would form the base on which the national project of reconstruction could be built.

However, as Benedict Anderson explains, the impulse to struggle for ideals that will unify a people and. at the same time, distinguish it from others is not always possible to be carried out in its totality, especially and precisely because so many differing elements were encompassed in the complex fabric of the new nations. Therefore. Anderson concludes that a nation, more than a concrete reality, is an imagined, limited, and sovereign community in which the ideal of the ruling class will be imposed onto the majority of the people. In that sense, it is theideal of a nation, more than its actual reality that sustains the myth of unity, coherence, and national identity. And there is nothing more ideal than the language of romance to allegorize the myth of national binding, matrimony, or what Ileana Rodriguez calls "erotica patriotica."

Just like during the Enlightenment in Europe, in which the project of modernization required a massive Aufkldrung effort to make the population aware of modem ideals, the changing of times and the creation of the ideal nations in Latin America also demanded a mobilization of many different fronts: the

74 press, with the creation of its newspapers; the political campaigns; and the literary manifestations(poesia

patriotica; cuadros de costumbre. and the first romance novels) all contributed to forge a national myth."

Until that time, the nations were conglomerates of unrepresented and unrecognized heterogeneities under

the ruling hand of the colonial power. The majority of the people composing a nation had no knowledge of

each other and no sense of identification.

In this respect, one has to consider the enormous contributions of the national presses. The

Mercurio Peruana, for instance, was the first newspaper of Latin America to inform people about what

happened inside their own nation, in the various regional and social spaces. Contrary to what the

newspapers from abroad did - they informed the colonized only about the socio-cultural and political

events in the metropolis - this “native" or post-colonial newspaper took upon itself the task of portraying

the intemal reality of the country.

The efforts were likewise numerous in the literary sphere. In literature, the literati became

conscious of the role of national literature in the shaping of their own myths. In Mexico, the novelEl

Periquillo Sarniento. by José Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi, for example, is emblematic of this general

effort. It is about a picaro who travels around the national territory in order to familiarize the reader -

supposedly the citizens of this new nation - with the different regions, ethnic customs, languages, and

social frontiers of the nation.

In Chile, Blest Gana called for authors to start focusing on the novelistic genre, because it seemed

to him to be the best vehicle for spreading the customs and the regional and local idiosyncrasies at the same time as it would set examples of an acceptable moral standard for society. He exorted mainly thenovelas costumbristas and the romance semtimental because

- In many cases, the newspapers or the press had been created at the end of the colonial period and fostered the independence movements movements and the insurrections against the colonial system. The writers were usually politicians. Blest Gana, for instance, was a diplomat and a public servant as well as novelist and literary critic.

75 su influencia en el mejoramiento social es al propio tiempo mâs directa también que la de otros géneros de novela pueden ejercer [...] en hacer resaltar la fealdad [los vicios] de aquéllos esta el deber del novelista y no en callarlos, y para esto las segundas [las virtudes] le ofrecen un poderoso auxiliar. (167)

In other words, Gana calls for a Latin American metanarrative, a Latin American discourse of legitimation of values entertained by the ruling class, just as it was demonstrated to have happened in

Europe in the second phase of Modernity. In fact, tie goal of creating a Latin American metanarrative seemed to be shared by a great number of intellectuals. Whether it was a nationalism of continental dimensions (a Panamericanism) such as that conceived of by the Cuban José Marti, or restricted to the confines of single nations, the myth of unification could be obtained through the creation of a national character that would typify the Latin American individual, and therefore appeal to everyone. Moreover, a national novelistic mode would enable the people to begin conceiving of a common national history for, without history, there is no possibility of intervention, of contribution in the process of a nation that is in its making.

With respect to this new novelistic approach, based on European Romanticism, Anderson Imbert states that “El romanticismo afirma la inspiracion libre y espontânea, los impulsos sentimentales, el acondicionamento historico en la vida de los hombres y los pueblos, la literatura como evocacion de un pasado nacionalista como propaganda para un futuro liberar’(264). In the novelEl Zarco. Ignacio M.

Altamirano does just that. He presents his ideal of a national hero, a hero who will represent the values, virtues, and traits of the inhabitants of this idealized and imaginary nation hoped for since Independence."

According to Doris Sommers, the sentimental or romance novel is the genre that best suits the purpose of the imaginary nation, because the romance of a young and moral couple is the paradigm for the nation in Latin America. The romance sentimental, in these terms, serves an allegorical function the

’ As we know, however, this ideal was never reached because of all the disputes for power, the different alliances made and the civil wars, which, instead of uniting the nations, actually divided them even more at the intemal level and in relation to neighboring countries.

76 European romance novel never did. for there, the love story did not convey domestic values or model the

construction of an exemplary family structure, inasmuch as the love story focused rather on the irrational

instinct of passion and could not serve as a national ideal. As a matter of fact, Sommers once again agrees

with Jamseson, who states that in Latin America even "those [texts] which are seemingly private and

invested with a properly libidinal dynamic, necessarily project a political dimension in the form of a

national allegory; the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation

of the public third-world culture and society"(69). In any case, in Latin America, the standard values and

morals envisioned for a nation would have to come from within the bosom of an honest, morally correct

and domestic household. Thus, the ideal love couple would have to be traditional, patriarcal, and

conservative, with religious and cultural mores as will be demonstrated in the novel El Zarco by

Altamirano.

In El Zarco, the land of Mexico (the land, the earth, symbolically representing the female figure),

having just recently gotten her independence, that is, her divorce from her husband Spain, needs to remarry

in order to have a reproductive life and to have a father for her children. Thus, the choice of a husband is

important, since his values will be passed on to the "civilizers," that is. the offspring of the couple who will carry out the project of building a modem cathedral, a modem ideal of a nation.

Altamirano presents the reader with two couples: Manuela and Zarco, Nicolas and Pilar. But only one of them could serve as a possible choice for the ultimate purpose of ensuring the woman (Land) to fulfill her reproductive and domestic functions and enabling the generations to come to be raised according to the national ideals. Before analyzing the characters Altamirano presents as possible ideals for the love couple, it is necessary to establish the hierarchies which Sommers proposes as basic criteria for the choice:

The gender was always the first requisite: the male sex is dominant in a patriarcal society. It is the values of the husband that will be passed on. The wife will be the reinforcer, the supporter of the husband in his enterprises and decisions. The second criterion is the social class: at least one of the parties needs to come

77 from nobility or from a traditional family, preferably the husband. The third element is race: one of the two

would have to be white, of European origin. The next element to consider would be the geographical

origin: does the couple, or one of them, come from the city, from an urbanized and civilized setting, or

from the underdeveloped rural area, and so forth.

In Zarco. Altamirano presents us with two prospective male figures and two females, in order

constitute an ideal couple. Zarco is apparently the male prototype for the nation. Even though he is a

'^bianco impuro." he is handsome, has blue eyes and comes from a good traditional family. He is given the

opportunity to get an education, but he prefers not to follow the ideal of his family and starts working errantly around different farms until he becomes a '^bandolero" who robs from the farms and attacks travelers, spreading violence and fear throughout the province. Everybody fears and hates him. Manuela is also white and beautiful, and also comes from a good family. But because she has lost her father, she was pampered and spoiled, and developed a personality that did not exactly fit the parameters of the obedient and subservient woman who would fulfill the role of the ideal female prototype of a nation inasmuch as she would bear children and raise them according to patriarchal values. Her will always had to prevail. In the story Manuela falls in love with Zarco and runs away with him because she knows that her people, her community, will not bless that relationship. In the end. she regrets the choices she made as a non submissive woman, but it is too late.

Then there is Nicolas. He is a hardworking and decent man. But. besides being an orphan, he is of

Indian descent, which is not ideal for someone who is supposed to function as a symbolical national figure, from the perspective of the criollo ruling class. Although he is not white, not Spanish, not noble, he represents the good values of the community and behaves better than Zarco. the ideal white male figure. In addition. Nicolas is the portrait of the bon-savage who is able to learn the ways of the white colonizer so well that he helps perpetrate the assimilated values by passing them onto the remaining community. In the novel, Nicolas becomes acquainted with Manuela’s family and helps Manuela's mother, the widow.

7 8 whenever necessary - not only because of his love for Manuela. but because he truly believes that is his

moral duty. Altamirano problematizes the question of the couples. In a first moment the author does not

allow Nicolas’s love for Manuela to come true because relationship between a white girl and an Indian was

still very shocking for the moral standards of that period. Manuela - representing the general tendency in

society - is not proud of an Indian, she prefers Zarco. who. besides being of Spanish descent, is the

legendary hero of the romantic novels.

Pilar. Manuela’s friend, is in love with Nicolas, and is actually a mestizo - an orphan just like

Nicolas - who is practically adopted by Manuela’s mother as an ahijada because o f her poor origin.

Taking into consideration the hierarchies established by Sommers, the ideal for the nation should

be the couple Zarco and Manuela. But Zarco. except for his Spanish origin, cannot be accepted as the national hero, the ideal father figure of the nation. He is corrupt, lazy, amoral, and a violator of the law.

Manuela, the first choice for the representation of a female national ideal, because of her libidinal desires, her will to independence and her egotistical behavior (she decides to run off with Zarco. disregarding completely what other people would think of her), is converted into a castrating figure who will never submit to the ideal “husband” and probably never raise any eventual children in the conventionally expected way.

Thus, the only other choice is Nicolas and Pilar. Nicolas, who would only be the second alternative, has other qualities that redeem his image of mestizo and make him the best choice as a national type. And Pilar, even though she would not be the first choice, inherited all positive qualities for the female land/mother figure that Manuela did not present. In her contact with Manuela’s mother. Pilar was able to assimilate the values of a traditional family and learn how to behave as a decent woman who would want to get married, have children, and create for herself a domestic environment she had been deprived of in her early childhood. Thus, together with Nicolas, she fulfills the requisites for the ideal couple. The alternative

Altamirano presents breaks with the tradition and subverts the actual expectations of the ruling class. As a

79 liberal he probably realizes that the old traditional model would actually hinder the nation-building process,

as Mexico’s future development would depend precisely on disrupting the conservative values inherited

from the colonial period. Altamirano proves this by showing that the traditional couple is not a viable

choice and that only a new, native-forged solution for the colonial problems would ensure Mexico to take

one more step in the direction of real independence and modernization.

As an llustrado, a maestro of the nation, Altamirano presents the reader with a new ideal of a

nation. But when he creates a second couple that is more viable as a national ideal of a love story, he clearly subverts the traditional values of the “acceptable” couple taken as the new model for the nation. If we were to consider Manuela’s mother, the widow, as Mexico/Land, Pilar and Nicolas could be considered her adopted children who take good care of her, love her, and will perpetuate the values she has passed on to them. Since the “perfect” couple of Mexican children frustrates the new nation’s expectations, Altamirano proposes an improvised family organization.

Symbolically, the orphan children are the peoples of Latin America after independence. They no longer have the Spanish father, and have to take upon themselves the task of reconstruction, of rebuilding the nation after the defunct colonial system was overthrown. They improvise a new future with the means they have at hand. Nicolas and Pilar will serve as the prototype for the new Latin American citizens, they will be the new modem individuals, the “civilizers” whose offspring will no longer be unidentified with the national cause, such as Zarco and Manuela, but will foster the myth of an American rebirth. However, the ideal nation, from a retrospective view, is never fully realized.

From the 20‘*’-century perspective, one realizes that the new nation, having freed herself from the old patriarchal/ colonial regime of Spain, ends up substituting him by a new husband, a new usurper, this time not coming from the other side of the Atlantic but from the North, the United States. Thus, the children of this marriage do not really become the “civilizers ” of the new nation envisioned by Altamirano, but the new cheap labor for the development of North America. As the plot of Altamirano’s novel shows.

80 the sentimental novel served as model for the ideal nation; it served at least to forge the national myth of

future possibilities.

In her examination of many other romance stories - Blest Gana’s novel Martin Rivas among them

- Doris Sommers concludes that these love stories, always thwarted in one way or another, are the ultimate

ideal of the nation. These novels capitalized on the dream of the romantic ideal couple of the bourgeosie.

but they did not articulate changes at a national scale, for. engaged in the portrayal of an ideal, such

narratives forgot to comment on the harsh reality of socio-economic exploitation of the majority of the

people at different social levels (they derealized reality by showing a myopian view of it). Nicolas and Pilar came from the lower classes, but the outcome of their romance is idealized to such an extent that it does not correspond to the concrete reality of discrimination of the Indigenous and African-American communities.

Consequently, the novels of the following generation of writers show no hope in the personal/domestic love story as a model for the nation. They will not deal with idealized romances, but with realist portraits of the bourgeois society that culminate with Naturalism and then decline until neorrealists like Scorza will endeavor to deconstruct the western myth by opposing it with other alternatives that re- semantic ize the myth and oppose it with the alternative elements of the binarism. such as Capitalism and

Marxism, proletariat and campesinos. city and countryside, and so forth.

3.1.2. The emergence and evolution o f the realist narrative in Latin America^

Irlemar Chiampi. in her well-known book El Realismo Mdgico. states that the term realismo mdgico began to be used almost indiscrimately as a term to describe literary attempts that tried to escape the

“modelo envejecido del realismo de los aflos veinte y treinta.” Realism was in crisis; it had reached “la

^ The characterization of the realist and neorrealist novels utilized for this study is based mainly on ideas from the “Novela Contemporanea,” which is the second part of Cedomil Goic's study entitled Historia de la Novela Hispanoamericana.

81 mecanizaciôn y al agotamiento de sus procedimientos'’ (21 ). It had become a metanarrative, which, instead

of posing challenges and alternatives, only reinforced Western hegemonic discourse practices. According to

Cedomil Goic

La historia del Realismo de la novela tradicional o modema es la de un progresivo descubrimlento de estratos sociales y de los aspectos exteriores, y determ inados externa y materialmente. de la realidad del hombre. Venciendo tabùes o posibilidades limitadas de la tolerancia sensible, la novela modema. consiguio revelar y conquistar el lado oscuro de la sociedad y del hombre: y cuando agotaba, en apariencias. las posibilidades de novedad y de descubrimiento y conquistaba con el aparato cientifico la entera racionalidad de lo real, la historia literaria se volcô hacia otro rumbo.(179)

As Goic points out. it is from within the modem realist novel itself that a counterdiscoursive

practice is generated. Perhaps inadvertently, writers eventually expose theanthitesis of the Enlightenment

thesis they wanted to bring forth. It is. in fact, during the fourth quarter of nineteenth-century Europe, when

the realist novel reaches its peak and opens the way to Naturalism, that the epochal principles of human and

material development — which refract the ideological models projected during Modemity — come under

scrutiny. Ironically, it is almost against their own positivist intentions that realist and naturalist authors

begin portraying the flaws of their own narrative, the imperfections of modem constructs, the modem

ideals. In Chapter One. as the reader might recall, attention was called to the fact that realist artists actually derealized the reality they wanted to represent in order to legitimate the power of the bourgeoisie, according to Lyotard.

As followers of the Enlightenment mentality, naturalist writers in their novels seemingly intended to reinforce the modem postulates and have the masses incorporate the new philosophical and ideological trends into their worldview. Needless to say. the novels they produced abounded in discussions of development and civilizational theories in order to fictionally play out society’s potential progress or fatal deterioration.- In their narratives, naturalist writers began treating society as a huge science laboratory.

^ In Cambaceres’s Sin Rumbo. Andrés is a ferocious reader of Schopenhauer. In Vargas Llosa’s contemporary novel La Guerra del Fin del Mtindo, the actions and mentality of the British reporter are

82 studying in detail various segments of society, applying the scientific theories to the psychological and social environment of their characters, only to discover that if these postulates appeared to make sense as a paradigm for the bourgeosie, they did not apply to the plight of the Other, the marginalized and underprivileged segments of society, just as Marx had pointed out in hisCommunist Manifesto.

Following Emile Zola's Roman Expérimental, many writers, among them the Spanish Emilia

Pardo Bazan, the Brazilian Euclides da Cunha and Aluisio de Azevedo, and the Argentine Eugenio

Cambaceres, for instance, looked upon and treated their characters as scientific objects, as living organisms under a microscope lens." What they found, contrary to the Enlightenment paradigms,' was that despite the individual rational ability and will, human subjects could act as instinctively and impulsively as any other species. Only under certain optimal fundamental conditions (which only the privileged classes could meet), such as a “favorable" race, heritage, and socio-historical environment, would the new individual be able to live up to the Enlightenment myth of rational humanism and its idea of social and material development.

These experimental and at times essayistic forms of fictional writing can be illustrated with

Cambaceres’s novel Sin Rumba: Estudios. As the subtitle overtly suggests, Cambaceres opts to take the scientific perspective as base for his literary critique. In his novel, he intended to study the reality of the

highly influenced by Positivism and Determinism; and in Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertôes. ideas of the New Republic are set against the backdrop of the old monarchic system.

" The majority of literary examples to illustrate the points in this chapter will be taken from Latin America instead of from Europe, so as to help pave the way into later discussions on the culmination of Manuel Scorza’s neorrealist endeavour as a Peruvian, and therefore a Latin American writer.

’ According to the Enlightenment paradigms or foundations — which constitute what is now known as the discourse of modemity or the metanarrative — the individual would and should be able to survive outside the walls of the old feudalistic system of the Middle Ages, where the Church and the State were the aurhorities that decided over the people's destiny. The false belief that man had to rely on Divine Providence, on the action of the Church and the State as his representatives, was now being challenged much more ferociously than the dissenters during the renaissance period. Early in the 18th century, the ideal of knowledge and progress, of man's own rational capacity and will to accomplish things on his own with the help of science and knowledge, began to sediment among intellectuals and had to be assimilated by society at large. Thus the process of re-educating the people lasted over a century, and, as was stated

83 subgroups o f gauchos and estancieiros in rural Argentina from the scientific rather than the humanist

perspective. By so doing, the author examined the role of such factors as ethnic and racial heritage, and

historical moment played in determ iming the fate of a given people. With the purpose of diagnosing

pathologies and prognosing cures, naturalist writers in general thought the ideals of an enlightened and advanced society could ultimately be reached.

But as the end of Cambaceres's novel seems to convey, much more is involved for the optimal

functioning and development of a social group than a mere set of optimal conditions. Andrés, the main character of the novel, had inherited wealth and property; he belonged to an honorable family and social group and did not find himself entrapped by racial, environmental, or economic conditions which, theoretically, were taken as elements that hindered the individual from advancing humanly as well as materially. O f all the characters in the novel, he should be the one to prove the naturalists right. But he does not. Despite meeting all the "pre-requisites" and being the one who could foster the enlightenment ideas and contribute to the development of society as a whole, he fails to do that. Despite his intelligence, his rational capacity and the means by which he could contribute to the construction of a perfect cathedral, he builds nothing out of his life.

Influenced by the theories of Schopenhauer, of whom Andrés was a voracious reader, his outlook on the world lacked idealism. Besides, he seemed to be fatalistic, and his spiritual attitude — impoverished and pessimistic — conformed neither to the current scientific theories nor to the utopian thrust projected since the Enlightenment. His pessimism prevents him from pursuing something more valuable and justifiable in life than his material development. Andrés was a frustrated Faust, as he could never find a balance between his rationality and his inner, libidinous and creative forces. He was, perhaps, experiencing the same anxiety and ambiguity Faust was during the first and second phase of European Modemity as a modem individual. Andrés apparently never recovered from the romantic melancholy that crippled in him

before, it only really reached its peak with the advance of the realist and naturalist novels late in the

84 the social subject capable of making the leap from the private to the public sphere. European non-canonical writers,* which Berman identified as avant-garde and modernist, and the Latin American modernistas. who are the generation that chronologically followed and who rebelled against the realists and naturalists, would probably have argued that the lack of a promise (the cathedral was beginning to crumble) of a rather transcendental nature that afflicted the decadent reality of the fin de siècle could have been the cause for

Andres's apparent nihilism.*’

On the other side of the spectrum, opposing the role Andrés plays in the novel, one finds the antithesis of the Positivist project being presented to the reader in the form of a surprising reaction on the part of the gauchos, the laborers working for Andrés. The reader realizes that despite their underdeveloped living conditions and their apparent lack of consciousness with regard to their own situation, they begin thinking about building a school for their children in order to secure a better future for the generations to come. The plans to build a school, in spite of the fact that they did not have the financial means to carry out such a project, show that these individuals should not be considered total social parasites or bestial individuals, who, according to the deterministic theories, have no moral, social, or political conscience to interfere in their own reality. Seen from a Marxist perspective, however, they indeed represent the modem potential force of rebellion that might reverse unfair social and economic conditions. Andrés, the rich and

nineteenth century.

* Perhaps the point to reiterate is that Modemity as a project was mainly twofold: (1) as a project of legitimating knowledge (canonical and traditional forms of expression) and (2) delegitimating practices (authors of dissent, for whom modemity also meant freedom of expression, progress and advancement, but always as a project that renewed itself critically and from within) see Lyotard’s subdivision numbers nine and ten, pp. 31-41.

*’ It is important to keep in mind here, that within the broadest project of the Enlightenment, of human rationalism, was the idea of the Superman, a man who does not need God any longer. Nietzsche's critique and explanation for the relentless appearance of pessimism, nihilism, is the fact that with the proclamation that God was dead came also the proclamation of the death of all ground of support for human values, significance and ultimate meaning. At the end of the century, it was suddenly realized that the new individual, the new cultural environment had produced the death of God, but had not fully understood its consequences.

85 educated man. on the other hand, resembles a parasite much more so than his alienated workers, for he lacks the promise, the challenge, and the faith his workers possess.

Thus, perhaps through his attempt to show how important those positivistic conditions were for the human being's sound and material development, Cambaceres ended up proving that the rationalist theory has its inherent flaws and shortcomings and that the individual, no matter how alienated from the means of production and power, partially recognizes the cause of his plight and his failure to succeed. But this tendency to think that the people are not in conditions to interfere in their own reality is. according to

Barbara Harlow, one of the legacies of the Enlightenment Project in which the bourgeosie, including sometimes its intellectuals, developed “the inability to believe in the capacities of oppressed people to create cultural products of value and oppositional groups of value” (193).

One concludes from this and other naturalist novels that what keeps the underdeveloped segments of society entrenched at the bottom is not solely their lack of a socio-moral conscience, but rather their inability to organize collectively in order to fight for changes at the structural level of society. Perhaps because they are entrenched at the bottom of society and pushed into a timeless and ahistorical existence, they cannot improve their living conditions. That, however, is different from saying that they do not advance because they do not meet the basic requisites for optimal development. If the masses are both alienated and have no means to act, they in fact will not be able to transform their society. But, on the other hand, if they are aware of their plight, even though they are poor, they might at least organize and fight for change.

To further substantiate this point, it may be worth mentioning that subsequently, with the emergence of the neorrealist novel, particularly in Manuel Scorza’s novelistic cycle "La Guerra Silenciosa"

— whose works will be discussed in more detail in this chapter — it becomes clear that the lower class's inability to fully organize and demand structural changes, and changes in the labor and production relations, is mainly caused by their condition of total economic dependence, which historically can be

8 6 explained through their past colonial domination. Even though they awaken from their ahistoricalness. from their state of apathy and alienation, their means of survival are in the hands of those who exploit them, and they will only become powerful in their action, if they organize massively so as to reverse the situation of dependence through strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, and so forth, as will be seen in Scorza's novels. The point, though, is that it is evident that the positivistic theories spread through the novels were shown to be but a part of the bourgeosie’s political and ideological stratagem for individuaL'class development and progress, and that in no way should it be perpetrated as the only promising ideal and paradigm for humanity as a whole.

This is why the neorrealist novelists, discrediting the dominant capitalist mode of Western thought, turn to a Marxist critique; for Karl Marx, as a critical revisionist of the modem capitalist ethos, was able to point to the fact that the great majority of the people did not enjoy the fhiit of their labor and were excluded from the so-called socio-human and material developmental projects. For Marx, human consciousness emerges through the evolution of human social and economical life, a dialectic process of negotiation for fairer labor and capital relations, and is not determined only by what positivists had believed. Division of labor, the separation in classes because of the maldistribution of wealth and the ideology of the ruling class (with its religious, philosophical, and economic ideas) were all used to legitimate and perpetuate the elite’s interests and not those of the remaining social segments.

The adhesion to the positivistic ideas before the turn of the century was so blinding that it did not permit the bourgeoisie to realize that underneath the naturalists' apparent endorsement of these ideas, they actually provided a comment on the rather negative side of human and historical development. Europe had, in fact, neared the edge of an abyss, just like Rousseau had predicted. But, obviously, if one only remembers Lyotard’s critique of the modem bourgeosie, it was not of its interest to recognize the flaws inherent in the system of development they put forth. This can also be illustrated by comparing two accounts of the same historical event, namely Canudos, a civil uprising in the countryside of Brazil at the

87 end of the nineteenth-century, right after that country had become a Republic, one by the Brazilian Euclides da Cunha, and the other, by the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa.

The novel Os Sertôes (The Backlands) by Euclides da Cunha. written in 1902. offers an almost as strong a critique of the Canudos Rebellion as Mario Vargas Llosa’s The iVar o f the End o f the World (La

Guerra del Fin del Mundoj. three quarters of a century later, in 1981. with a few differences. Both accounts can be considered modem literary efforts that look at that historical reality of Northeastern Brazil from different perspectives: the former from the naturalist and the latter from the neorrealist standpoint.

Both authors recontextualize the events that lead to a civil war between the landless and alienated peasants and the national armed forces in the state of Bahia, around 1890. Both novels reenact the dialectical forces at play: on the one hand, the endeavors of the upperclasses in modemizing the country, and on the other, the forces of opposition and resistance led by Antonio Conselheiro. a religious figure whose concept of an ideal nation certainly did not include the establishment of a modem nation-state - from an Empire to a

Republic. Undernourished, isolated in the hinterlands, illiterate, and entrenched at the bottom of the social structure, Conselheiro and his followers had no conditions to possibly understand the significance and/or advantages of the proposed changes, which they viewed as tempting the forces of evil. Their resistance and unwillingness to accept the winds of Modemity apparently prove the point made by theories of determinism and positivism, that certain basic conditions are necessary for the human and technological advancement of a society, or at least for a historical consciousness of reality.

If Euclides da Cunha bases his representation of Canudos by concentrating on the new postulates showing that indeed environmental, social, and historical conditions, such as regional isolation, geographical and climatic conditions, undemourishment and poverty, as well as racial mixing

(miscigenacion) lead to the underdevelopment of a given group, he likewise offers a socio-political critique of the situation by showing how the élite undermines the role other structural problems played in the full

8 8 development of that region. However, in his analysis of the ideology of colonialism. Wemeck Sodré offers

a critique of Euclides da Cunha’s novels, contending that.

[ejxiste em Euclides da Cunha um dualismo singular; enquanto observa, testemunha. assiste, conhece por si mesmo, tern uma veracidade. uma importincia. uma profundidade e uma grandeza insuperaveis; enquanto transmite a ciência alheia. ainda sobre o que ele mesmo viu, conheceu, decai para o teorismo vazio. para a digressào subjetiva, para a ênfase cientifica. para a tese desprovida de demonstraçào.( 136)

While Euclides da Cunha’s account may have fallen into this “empty theorism." to the extent that

it is less valued as a critical novel. Vargas Llosa’s neo-realist account, seemingly more politically and socially committed, conveys a sense of apocalyptic crisis that contrasts sharply with the sanguine faith in the coherent unfolding of events that is central to the ideology of the realistic novel (Booker 75). Da

Cunha’s inability to foresee an apocalyptic crisis reinforces all-the-more the point made so far, that the realist and naturalist narratives are discourses of legitimation, which underscore the myth of the modem cathedral.

Perhaps Vargas Llosa himself offers an explanation for what could be called the “inefficacy” of the naturalist novel, when he parodies the naturalist, scientifically based form of novelistic documentation chosen by da Cunha. Vargas Llosa does this by creating a character that is a caricature of a positivist dilettante scientist who participates in the events of Canudos as a reporter, just as Euclides da Cunha. the historical persona who actually wrote his novel based on his observations as a newspaper reporter from Sào

Paulo. Vargas Llosa’s fictional reporter, in order not to be killed during the uprising, serves the interests of both sides: the followers of this fanatic cult as well as the local and regional authorities who own the newspapers and have political interests in the outcome of the war. Through this parody, Vargas Llosa criticizes the flaws of such positivistic and imperialistic mentality by unveiling the fraud, the corruption, and the interests of politicians and army officers who organized and led the attacks against Antonio

Conselheiro and his followers. Vargas Llosa’s fiction, in other words, shows how the changes from a

89 monarchy to a modem republic entailed much more than a pious desire for modernization, secularization of

knowledg,e and the raising of a positivistic conscience.

Perhaps in his endeavor so many decades later. Vargas Llosa did not feel trapped, or ideologically

blinded, by the theories that reigned during the time of the actual event, and. unlike Euclides da Cunha. was

able to "raise important questions concerning authorship and the relationship between history as the

unfolding of events and history as the narrative inscription of those events" in a manner that Euclides da

Cunha was not able to do (Booker 760). From his position as a writer who sided with the interests of the rising class, it is a surprise to see that da Cunha did not prevent Antonio Conselheiro from having a voice to counter that of the politicians and armed officers representing the emerging class during the time of transition to a republican government. This was. perhaps. Da Cunha's main merit when fictionalizing this meaningful historical event. In any case, even though da Cunha wanted to reinforce the republican ideals through his naturalist fiction, he did expose the bigotry and the corruption hidden behind the façade of

“order and progress."'"

If this brief comparative exemplification intended to demonstrate how little impact certain naturalist novels had. at the time, on indeed promoting an awareness about the darkside or the instrumentality of rationalist thought and on the burdens of history, naturalist narratives did contribute to the relentless unmasking of the principles of the Enlightenment which had not truly helped reverse the course of history. The new practices of dominance and power, however modem, however justified under the new national/Westem ideologies, resembled those of the previous era. This is in fact at the core of

Wemeck Sodré s critique of Euclides da Cunha's novel: that his work, despite his efforts to explain the conditions of the Brazilian sertao (backlands). "ainda pertenciam à ideologia do colonialismo'. ou seja. o

The words "order and progress” are deliberately used in this context because precisely during the period of the civil war. when the republicans take over, they adopt the positivist motto of order and progress, which they chose for the Brazilian flag, thus reinforcing the fact that the Enlightenment project of nationhood was also assimilated in Brazil.

90 conjunto de representaçôes, pensamentos e teorias desenvolvidas na Europa imperialista das ultimas

décadas do século XIX” (137).

Da Cunha’s and Llosa’s fictional accounts of the Canudos rebellion demonstrate two important

things: first, the fact that the transitional periods from an imperialistic form of government to a republican

one is not free of complications, and secondly, that a transition from a modem to a postmodern narrative is

long and winding. In Latin America, when the nations became independent and started with their nation-

building narratives, the enlightened ideals were at their peak, and it was not always easy to question such

ideals from within, especially because the realist and naturalist discourses also evolved from within the

larger ideology of the enlightenment myth." If, however, one recalls Berman’s definition of Modemity

discussed in Chapter One, it makes sense to see that society will change and transformation will occur in a society only when its intemal discourses of legitimation are questioned and challenged again and again, never thinking that the task of modernization has been fully accomplished. And this sense of self-criticism and innovation underlying the realist and naturalist narrative is, no doubt, what led to the relentless evolution of Latin American literature insasmuch as they realized that the primordial ideal of a perfect modem cathedral that followed the mold of the European construction needed to be re-imagined and re invented so as to better suit the necessities of the emerging and modem nations outside the West.

3.1.3. Conte.xtualization of the neorrealist or socio-realist novel in Latin America

As was demonstrated earlier in this chapter, the preceding realist and literary production can be said to have participated in the process of encoding the ideas of the Enlightenment, the modem and rationalist project, into the broader spheres of society. It was also contended that, while naturalist writers

" As will be demonstrated in the next chapter, in the Lusophone African countries, given the fact that independence took place only from the middle of the 20th century onwards, these ideals had already been questioned and their national discourses explored different altematives, not those of the naturalist narrative.

91 rationalist project, into the broader spheres of society. It was also contended that, while naturalist writers

(and, later, the avant-garde movement authors) were the ones who most exposed the flaws of this perfect

civilizational model brought forth by the realists, they also failed to realize that this model was designed

based on the mentality and expectations of elites that retained power and controlled the means of

production at both the base and the superstructural levels of society.

Perhaps because the metanarrative discourses of the dominant ideology were so ingrained in their

perception of the world, they were unable to deal with, or to propose altematives for. such structural

problems as the increasing class inequalities, the exploitation of the proletariat and the peasants. They did not venture to deal with the emerging forms of imperialism and neo-colonialism that resulted, as side- effects. from the envisioned positivist model. They presented a critique, an antithesis of the perpetrated

Enlightenment Project, but never did they really present a constructive solution for the problematic of exploitation, for the problematic of this legitimating discourse practice that was only widening the gap between the dominant and the labor classes.

Thus, determined to dismantle the cathedral and build something new in its place, neorrealists begin to experiment with a new form of realism, namely, rteo/realism. Such authors understood that to just reflect societal problems with the idealization of the neoclassics, the subjectivity and sentimentalism of the romantic and modernist periods, with the blinding scientificism or ideal positivism of the naturalists, or with the introspection and pure aestheticism of avant-garde's high modernism, would not lead to real change, that is. to an effective deconstruction of the modem ideal. To indeed challenge and not just expose the status quo. the establishment and its myths, neorrealist writers would have to present society with new ideological and literary altematives not always easy to implement in view of the powerful metanarrative that had been intentionally alienating the masses to the point that they could not reverse their own plight, even when they had wanted to do so. With that in mind, as Goic points out. the generation of neorrealist writers begins to focus on realitv

92 con el acento social puesto en la representacion de zonas de realidad que importan la lucha de clases, la dignificaciôn del proletariado [...] la denuncia del latifiindismo y de la explotaciôn de los campes inos y indios; la denuncia de del imperialismo extranjero. de las condiciones sociales del obrero y su desigualdad y de la apropiaciôn ventajosa de las riquezas nacionales. (218)

At any rate, for the neorrealists. the flaws of the western metanarrative and the model the realists put forth should not be ascribed to the fact that Modemity had placed so much faith on reason, will, and progress, but to the means by which the suppposed human and socio-material development were to be conquered and who would enjoy its benefits. The problems of the modem ideal should be ascribed, in other words, to capitalism as the mode of production that elides from its exclusivist project all those whose history, identity, and culture is other than the eurocentric bourgeosie and/or local mling classes. If, for the neorrealists. the problem lies in capitalism and not in the Westem model alone, the myth of Modemity will not be debunked. It will only be re-semanticized by projecting the Marxist mode of thought as a socio- ideological and cultural altemative. Unquestionably, as the product of another Westem (counter)discourse practice, Marxism will likewise pose difficulties when adopted as an altemative for nations attempting to devise their own strategies of development.

As a consequence of these two first factors — that, deep down, they still believed in the Westem model but saw capitalism as entailing specific problems that impeded utopia to be realized — the neorrealist narratives will continue to configure reality in rather manicheist terms, through antinomies and binary oppositions charged with an either positive or negative value, such as capitalism and socialism. East and West, colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed. Christian and non-Christian, bourgeoisie-elite and proletariat-peasants, civilized and primitive, European language and vemacular language, and so forth.

But in the neorrealist case, the narratives are almost invariably going to oppose the hegemonic forces by taking the second concept of each of these binomials, or by proposing a recombination of various of its elements, and so fundament their counterdiscursive beliefs. In their novels, Manuel Scorza and

Pepetela take the stand of the oppressed/ Indian/ campesino/ black/ native/ landless/ proletarian and criticize capitalism in favor of a more socialist-oriented form of government. But neither, by the same token,

93 despite their critique of the role of the Church as an institution that endorses domination and capitalism, seems to ferociously attack Christianity (first element of the binomial) in favor of autochthonous forms of religion (second element of the binomial).'’

This manicheist mode of dialectical representation of reality seems to be more direct, explicit, and

(de)constructive than, for instance, the naturalists' or the modernists’ mode, since it proposes concrete ideological altematives for each regional, national or transnational problem it exposes and attacks. At the same time, the simple inversion, that is, the mere substitution of one element for another, let us say socialism instead of capitalism as a more suitable economic developmental model, or the recombination of elements of these binomials, is a way to continue reinforcing the existing system of domination. According to Simon Gikandi, this is in fact the method deployed by metanarratives, by official discourses of legitimation, “to stabilize the existing system of domination by means of always again focusing on the binomial” (240). To just present an altemative binary representation — rather than one of opposition — will not help to destabilize, reverse, or subvert hegemonic practices.

For one. it is argued that some historical burdens that mark the modem age are irreversible and lead to a situation of ideological and philosophicalambiguity'' as to what can be dispensed with and/or should be rejected in the pursuit of an ideal nation, and what simply cannot, or should not, be discarded, and cannot be combated through a binary perception of reality.''* Even when this drama appears to be of an

'- With respect to Christianity, it has to be admitted that both Scorza and Pepetela antagonize Christianity in its orthodox form by presenting characters whose views of Christianity resemble or identify with those of Theology of Liberation, a more socialist form of Christianity.

'* Perhaps due to the fact that in Lusophone Africa the nation-building projects are more recent, the aforementioned ambiguity seems to be much more apparent and difficult to combat than in Latin America, where this issue has already been dealt with for over a century, since the early 19th century, when their “Foundational fictions,” to use Sommer’s terminology, emerged.

'■* Parallel to the production of novels is the rise of a literature focused on the issue of identity, such as Rodo’s Ariel and Retamar Femandez’s Caliban, or José Marti, who, among others, adverted to

94 either-or nature, when choices have to be made, it becomes clear that some of the choices are not even

available and that some of these opposing elements are not always mutually exclusive and sometimes are

going to co-exist. That is why. as Russell Hamilton contends in Literatura Africana. Literatura .Wecessària.

■‘o dominado, sabendo que é impossivel realizar uma inversào total dos processes historicos. tenta

apoderar-se dos aspectos da aculturaçâo que possam servir-lhe como armas para a independéncia”(36).

What Russell Hamilton refers to, undoubtedly, is the process of canibalization with which ex-colonial

peoples have had to learn to appropriate the tools of the master for their own defense and survival. What

comes to mind here is the metaphor of the cannibal, or Caliban, who, according to Roberto Fernandez

Retamar, had to outsmart the master in order to be freed from the chains of dependency.

When discussing the concept of the national idea within the context of newly bom African nations,

Abiola Irele emphasizes the importance ofculture, as opposed to a reorganization only at the economical

and material levels, as the device through which complex ambiguous and oftentimes irreconcilable elements may be reordered into a coherent and cohesive force that will eventually lead to national identity,

integration, and advancement.

On a parenthetical note, it may be worth recalling the positive impact of the written word over some of these newly bom nations which used to be agraphic and therefore used to rely only on the griot'' as the figure who would preserve the memory and the history of a people. Ironically but fortunately, of all the acculturated legacies of colonization currently brought into dispute, the tradition of the written word, and consequently of a written literature, is one that no country — caught in this ambiguity of sorting out what to

some of the dangers of importing ideals and models from nations that re-produced, with a new facade, some of the old mechanisms of explotation, colonization, imperialism, and new forms of economic and cultural dependency.

According to Ruth Finnegan, the magicians, the griots and wise elderly are identified in the function of masters, teachers, and visionaries. The griot is the one that transmits all forms of knowledge: from the traditions, the culture and the religious and moral principles of the community to the epic narratives, the verses that would praise the historical and heroic deeds of the ancestors in order to recreate and preserve the mythological memory of their dynasties, lineages, and clans.

95 keep and what to discard — is willing to reject. For this reason alone, that some of the legacies inherited

through colonization are worth keeping, it is possible to understand that the neorrealists" desire to merely

reverse some of the concepts, values, and beliefs of the antinomy ultimately lead to yet another

reductionist, simplistic representation of reality.

In addition to the binary configuration of the world and its entailing ambiguity, one has to take

into consideration the role of the novel. Ian Watt, in The Rise o f the Novel, calls attention to the fact that the novel grew in popularity during the age of Enlightenment and subsequently supported the unilateral spread of Westem, modem paradigms, precisely because it inhered the ability to eliminate multiple representations and readings of reality. As such, as a discourse of legitimation, as has been discussed in Chapter One, the realist novel contributed even further to the neorrealists" inability to indeed deconstruct the metanarrative from this binary perspective they perhaps were not yet mature enough to get rid of.

To reiterate the point that the novel as a genre restricts multiple representations of reality, one should be reminded that with the Enlightenment and the consequent necessity to spread and reinforce the rationalist ethos, the epic and the chivalric romance — which abounded in popular/folkloric myths, fables, and oral accounts that released the hidden voices and identities and made them heard — had to be replaced by the realist novel, considered a more adequate vehicle of expression of a "single"" truth and reality. It is therefore not surprising to hear Pepetela affirm that the projects to substitute the previous modem cathedral, as products of the imaginary, seemed to be perfect and feasible, but in practice, they tumed out to be painful projects that led to the construction of imperfect chapels.

This also explains why neorrealist and postmodemist writers attempt to rescue and incorporate into their novels some of the old oral techniques (abandoned by the realists) that will aesthetically enable them to express less concrete and visible elements of reality that were completely erased from the realist accounts. This attempt of salvaging lost literary techniques is essentially modem in the sense that the very concept of Modemity implies renewal and innovation, otherwise we would still be in the Middle Ages, to

96 paraphrase Octavio Paz inLa oira vor."’ And modem man’s freedom and capability for excelling, for

surpassing his own abilities — which indeed is unrelated to his heritage and means as the naturalist thought

— allowed authors to realize that it was necessary to start experimenting with new technical narrative

solutions “para construir una imagen plurivalente de lo real” (22) and thus try to avoid incurring in their

predecessors mistakes, of likewise transforming their narratives into grand mythical and repressive

narratives.

To indeed deal with the inherent socio-cultural ambiguity, historical distortions within a heterogeneous reality, as well as the "narrowness” of the novel as a means of expression of Otherness, neorrealist writers begin portraying reality "ensanchandola reveladoramente por la incorporacion de esteras nuevas de origen o afincamiento popular, con un significativo trasfondo antropologico [...] que hacen del mito y de la conciencia mitico popular, las creencias. el fundamento de un mundo. de un orden y de una dignidad sorprendentes”(22). This is. as will be examined later, when neorrealist writers start resorting to

Real Maravilloso. Real Maravilloso will help replace the imported modem myth by more autochthonous myths that were bom within their communities, their cultural background and that pertain to their imaginary, and are recreated as they were passed on from generation to generation.

In Latin America, it is apparent that the closer writers get to what is known as the postmodem era. the broader the gap between literary commitment to reality and literary autonomy. In their initial efforts, neorrealist writers, in reaction to the “modelo envejecido del realismo de los anos veinte y treinta” (21 ). begin experimenting with "otras soluciones técnicas para constituir una imagen plurivalente de lo real”(22) and develop a narrative that culminates, as was mentioned before, in the 60s with what is now known as the literature of the boom or of the Real Maravilloso.

Paz s suggestion that there is a tradition of mpture already shows the predicament of the Enlightenment, of the modem age, for it conceived of itself as a rupture with the previous medieval tradition.

97 Writers of the neorrealist generation will be at the base of the transition to postmodernist writing.''

Julio Cortazar (Argentina). Juan Carlos Onetti (Uruguay). Carlos Droguett (Chile). Juan Rulfo (Mexico), and Alejo Carpentier (Cuba) among many, still engage in a process of exploring the complexities, contradictions, and ambiguities of reality, from a socio-political and ideological point of view, in what is known as "literatura comprometida” or "combativa." They realize that the beautiful modem cathedral has lost its enchantment and beauty; however, they will not do it without "enlarging" the scope of the real and visible reality.

A few examples to brietly illustrate this point: Alejo Carpentier. who will be the one to inaugurate the Real Maravilloso literature, does exactly that. In his novel Los Pasos Perdidos, the narrator, suffering from an empty existence as a composer and intellectual, reevaluates his life, his beliefs, and ultimately his identity, while on an expedition to collect primitive musical instruments in South America. In this voyage he recovers elements of reality that were completely forgotten or despised by the new modem society.

Carpentier challenges the paradigmatic structures that order the world and brings to the surface other elements that influence the complexity of reality: the retum to an edenic or primeval time: the dialogism of many voices that break the univocal and monolithic discourse of reality: and the interpolation of marvelous elements from reality which play an important role in the way the narrator re-shapes his view of reality and the order of things. Here we have what Goic characterizes as the "caida de lo sagrado" ( 187). the

"explosion of the cathedral." the disappointment Latin Americans and other postcolonial nations felt not just after they achieved their independence, but also after decades of attempting to rebuild their nations and redefine a collective cultural and socio-political identity in their own terms.

As the literary production in Latin America approaches the final stage before Postmodemity. more shifts in the representation of reality are noticeable. The boom generation, known as the tme Real

Here. I am utilizing Cedomil Goic's model of periodization from his study Historia de la Novela Hispano Americana.

98 Maravilloso generation — instead of taking a stance in favor of or against a given reality, as the neorrealist

in general have done — will represent the world "como laberinto. el laberintico espacio interior de la

conciencia o la experiencia del mundo exterior como laberinto" (Goic 246). They depart from reality itself,

and criticize it. but. having accepted its inherent contradictions, will rather capitalize on its extraneous,

unfamiliar, marvelous, and ambivalent aspects. Authors of this generation believe that instead of totally

giving up representing reality and looking for fictional material elsewhere, they will recreate, reinvent, and

look for the marvelous, magic, unnoticeable. extraneous, and sometimes even grotesque elements hidden in

reality itself.

Perhaps the most recognized exponent of this generation is Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia),

but many others, such as Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), the already mentioned Alejo Carpentier (Cuba).

Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), José Donoso (Chile). Erico Verissimo and Jorge Amado (Brazil) and Manuel

Scorza (Peru) have engaged in discovering new means of representing "una realidade extraordinaria y

maravillosa" by drawing from autochthonous, traditional, archaic, folkloric and popular elements which are

usually reduced to insignificant — if not altogether overlooked — in most attempts at representing a specific reality. This can be detected, as will be demonstrated next, in Manuel Scorza’s novels. In La danza inmovil, the author weaves together different realities, different ideals and fantasies. First, the reality of the

Latin American revolutionary guerrillas and the individual realities of its subjects, with the intent of showing that their collective ideal and the utopian socialist dream may not be so consistent and may not be shared by everyone. Then, the ideals and dreams of the individual and those of the Latin American guerrilla movements; and lastly, the magical, the mythical and popular beliefs of the people, who in their daily struggle for survival, practically ignore the revolutionary' realities and ideals and feed on supernatural elements that maintain them aloof of and immune to their oppressive reality.

99 3.2 From the neorrealist to the Real Maravilloso novel in Latin America:

The Peruvian Manuel Scorza

Because Manuel Scorza ( 1928-1983). according to Goic's generational perspective, does not figure among the Latin American neorrealist writers per se. but rather among the "irrealist" generation that followed."* his literary oeuvre is emblematic of the transitional period between neorrealism and Real

Maravilloso. Manuel Scorza's novels serve as an adequate example to illustrate what the neorrealist novel in Latin America has or has not accomplished in its literary efforts to deconstruct the metanarrative and indeed be able to "finally” face the projects of Modemity. and to illustrate what ultimately leads to the emergence of the Real Maravilloso novel.

Despite some earlier poetical endeavors. Manuel Scorza mainly dedicates his literary activity to the writing of critical essays and novels, producing a number of five novels that belong to the cycle "La

Guerra Silenciosa " and a sixth and last novel entitled La danza inmovil. In spite of the fact that Manuel

Scorza's novels have acquired worldwide acceptance and international reputation through translation into several languages, a solid literary critique on his work is scarcely available. Two exceptional studies, however, will be utilized for the present analysis: the already mentioned stylistic study by Anne-Marie

Aldaz, The Past o f the Future. and La Estrategia Mitica de Manuel Scorza. by Roland Forgues. the latter focusing on the double dimension of the myth "en tanto que construcciôn literaria. como soporte de la modemidad a la que aspiraba el escritor "( 16).

" The fact that Goic actually classifies him as "irrealist" does not hinder but fosters the main argument of this study that writers, tired of mechanically reproducing reality in order to subvert it. need to resort to other techniques, such as questioning what is real and bringing apparently "unreal" elements into reality in order to reinvent it. Choosing to discuss a novelist that already presents narrative traits typically identified with Real Maravilloso may also shed some light on the usually misconceived view that the development of certain narrative traits, styles, and innovations is solely generational rather than also a question of the writer’s attitude, point of view, and position towards the representation of a given reality.

100 From Redoble por Rancas. the first novel of the cycle, to La Ttimba del Reldmpago, the last one.

one sees most of the already mentioned neorrealist characteristics at play. First, the desire not to simply

expose the flaws of the metanarrative but to indeed present concrete ideological and literary altematives.

All five novels of the cycle will, within the rigid binary configuration of the world, reenact the plight of

those left outside history, outside the metanarrative. In an attempt to counter the hegemonic discourse and

counter the previous narrative tradition. Scorza will authentically voice the struggles of the indigenous

population o f Peru. i.e.. thecampesinos, comuneros. landless; all who have fallen victims of the system

since the Spanish conquest and domination, to the point that Scorza will become known as one of the

strongest representatives of the indigénisme movement'"' for having contributed to a new. less-idealized

representation of the Peruvian and Latin American Indian.

Scorza’s attempts to overcome one of the main flaws of the metanarrative, the suppression of

otherness, as Booker contends in his study of Vargas Llosa Among the Postmodernists, however, does not

insinuate that he gives up the rationalist or Westem myth of rebuilding the modem cathedral. On the contrary, by retelling the history of those who have conducted a ’silent war” over four centuries. Scorza

insinuates that he still strongly entertains the ideal of a better and more just place where those left out. non- historical beings or non-beings will be given the role of protagonists to perform their role at center-stage.

Therefore, in the five novels of the cycle, Scorza overtly proposes the re-semantization of the

Westem myth by reformulating it in accordance with Marxist postulates. But contrary to what the foundational fictions did. Scorza's novels will not attempt to unite a heterogenous population under the umbrella of nationalism by means of creating an ideal love story myth. Scorza will unveil the problems that arose from the totalizing discourse or metanarrative of foundation which did not speak for the masses of peoples who were left unrepresented and entrenched at the margin of the enlightened national project.

For a more detailed discussion on the roots of Latin American and particularly Peruvian Indigenismo, and Scorza’s role as an indigenista writer, see Anne-Marie Aldaz’ The Past o f the Future. especially Part I and Part IV.

101 The struggles of the comuneros and campesinos to reclaim their land after it had been taken by

colonialists and later by neo-colonialists, that is. by national elites and/or transnational corporations, is

based in its entirety on discussions of how the Marxist myth has to be re-elaborated to suit the needs of the

Latin American reality. To accomplish this effectively, he weaves into his novels discussions of eminent

Latin American Marxist thinkers or writers such as José Maria Arguedas. José Carlos Mariategui. César

Vallejo and other figures of the Latin American history, whose ideas or texts are woven into the narrative. or who have been impersonated by characters in his novels.

This is very clear in La Tumba del Relàmpago: Genaro Ledesma, a lawyer who will head the campesino struggles at Cerro de Pasco, is actually a leftist activist in contemporary Peru. Another example of the way in which Scorza attempts to come up with more heterodox or viable forms of Marxism more suitable for the Latin American reality, can be found in this same novel. When Ledesma is on his way back to the town of Cerro. after having finished his law degree, with the promise that he will now represent the comuneros as their legal lawyer, this is what he is thinking;

Agotado por la cuesta. el omnibus entro a la pampa Junin. A cuatro mil trescientos metros de altura. la falta de oxigeno aplastaba el pecho. José Carlos Mariategui. quiza el linico creador del marxismo americano. habia escrito que el mas vasto reservorio de energias revolucionarias de America Latina dorm fa en las profundidades del campesinado quechua. (233)

Not only does Scorza pick up on previous Latin American Marxist thinkers, but he further problematizes the ideas they brought forth. In this same novel, when Ledesma meets with one of the heads of the Peruvian

Communist Party, Scorza points to one of the main problems the Peruvian campesinos find when trying to organize their struggle: the inflexibility on the part of the leftist intellectuals to rethink and adjust the doctrines of Marxism to the Latin American context:

^Qué hago aqui. se preguntô Ledesma. El camarada Del Prado repetia.casi parecia que leia. un manual de marxismo. la teoria y tâctica de los bolcheviques preparândose a asaltar el Palacio de Inviemo. Volviô a ver la comunidad de Yarusyacân avanzando sobre Paria, las multitudes gritando detrâs de sus banderas destenidas. Necesitamos armas doctor, autoricenos a atacar la tropa. Conocemos los lugares donde descarrilar a los trenes. ; Armas, doctor! El camarada del

102 Prado siguiô extendiéndose sobre los peligros de una guerra campesina no encauzada doctrinariamente. (234 emphasis added)

Scorza’s ideological platform or program not only foresees the necessity to attune the Marxist

mode of thought to the specific Latin American reality, but also the necessity to render the struggles at the

base of Latin American societies more effective, turning the "silent war" into a more visible and audible

revindication of rights. For this goal to be accomplished. Scorza also sees the necessity of criticizing the strategies by which this silent war is conducted. He criticizes, in other words, the campesinos themselves,

pointing to the elements of their cosmovision, their cultural reality, that render their struggle futile. Scorza. therefore, criticizes the peasant’s alienation and the superstitions that distort their perception of reality, and their inability to articulate and organize their struggle in a coherent and massive rebellion that could bring to an end all exploitative practices that make of the Peruvian society a place far from that ideal.

Coming from the Marxist philosophical tradition. Scorza frequently seems to believe that their alienation can be combated through the guidance and ideological orientation of leftist intellectuals, the leftist enlightened thinkers such as Genaro Ledesma and Manuel Scorza himself, who supposedly can better identify and articulate the mechanisms that encroach the masses at the bottom of the system. If this indeed helps insert their struggle into a broader framework of socialist activism, this somewhat condescending or paternalistic view at the same time prevents the neorrealist novel from eliminating that mythical aura, or that metanarrative quality they seek to destroy. The modem myth is present in his narrative not only in what concerns his ideological conceptions, but also in the way his narrative is structured. This becomes very clear in the study by Forgues.

Forgues states that Manuel Scorza utilizes the myth-" with two clear intentions in mind: first, to reveal the Peruvian and. by extension. Latin American reality as it really is; next, to subvert "el orden [or

Here, one has to call attention to the fact that the myth, as it is being used in this context, slightly differs from the use of the term "myth" which is used to describe the metanarrative of medieval

103 reality] que describe en sus novelas" (12 emphasis added). The way Scorza envisions to accomplish this is

the following: he construes a critique and reformulation of the Westem myth by counterpoising it with

myths of indigenous origin, placing myths against the myth, in other words. He brings into the narrative

indigenous myths, tales, traditions, religious beliefs, and truths that have been left out by the hegemonic

forms of representation, in order to point to the coexistence of multiple and conflicting realities. Forgues

contends that these “lesser' myths

forma[n] parte de la aprension y vision del mundo de los comuneros que siguen siendo muy distintas a la aprension y vision del mundo occidentales, como senala varias veces el novelista al insisitir en que todavia siguen existiendo en los pueblos del Peru un barrio alto' y un "barrio bajo' aunque am bos barrios se encuentren en una llanura. Es sencillamente una superviviencia de la cosmovision precolombina. (148)

According to Forgues. this strategy of unfolding a hidden but existing mythology should lead first to a recognition of the alienated reality but. ultimately, to the substitution of the mythical consciousness by a historical consciousness "conforme va concretândose el poderoso proceso de concientizaciôn de las masas campesinas iniciado en la primera balada de la gesta colectiva de La guerra silenciosa"'( 14). Therefore, while this procedure presupposes the reconstruction or re-elaboration of myths, it also presupposes its relentless destruction. For the re-mythologization of the indigenous past may act as a double-edged sword, which may reinforce their confidence in themselves, but may also blind them in their efforts to utterly understand and transform their historical reality. Needless to say, it is precisely this counterpointing of the

Westem rationalist myth with the popular myths that enables Scorza’s novels to also be identified with

Realismo Maravilloso. The "big" myth is responsible for giving the novels its metanarrative/realist

and modem times. The medieval or modem myth, also referred to as "the myth of the Cathedral." refers to the hegemonic practice of spreading onto all spheres the paradigms of order and truth that the institutions of Church and State and of secular knowledge have set as a model for the whole of society. The myth one is referring to now has to do with imaginary references and stories and beliefs from a rather popular origin, that have become a part of the way in which reality is perceived from the bottom up, not from the top down, as the former connotation of myth used.

104 features, that is, an incomplete and not so truthful or verisimile reductive realism, and the "little" myths, which are also part of reality, but a hidden reality, will make the novel attain its "marvelous” quality.

In the "primera gesta," Redoble por Rancas. Scorza allegorizes the centuries of the Indians' futile attempts of rebellion against the oppressive colonial and civil authorities in a double-plotted story, which is inspired in actual events. The first storyline recounts the deeds of the Indian Chacon in defying the unjust authority of Dr. Francisco Montenegro, the judge of the town of Rancas. The second retells the endless struggle of the whole community to claim back their ancestral land from Cerro de Pasco Corporation, an

American mining company. The fact that the villagers in both plots think that their situation "is a divine punishment for their sins" (53) as Aldaz contends, reflects Scorza’s preoccupation in finally waking Indians up from this complex of inferiority and the humble attitude which only worsens their plight and hinders them from taking action.

The first step in the transformation necessarily requires a change in attitude and belief that would metamorphose what Forgues calls a conciencia vencida into a conciencia historica. If they ever want to reverse their situation and collectively fight for their rights, they’d better first regain their confidence and sense of worth. But to reach this historical consciousness, it is necessary to realize what has already been mentioned, which is the fact that this conciencia vencida is a result of their having been marginalized from history and thrown into a mythical, timeless, displaced world that seemed to occur independently and outside the history being "produced" by Europeans in the American continent.

A factor that contributes to the Indians’ conciencia vencida. or their inability to see their reality as it really is, is that they have become imprisoned and victimized by their own mythical beliefs. Scorza illustrates this by little tales, or episodes, structured around the main plots of the novels. In the opening episode ofRedoble. the narrator tells the reader of an incident that occurred when judge Montenegro went for his usual stroll at the town’s plaza at six in the evening. By accident he drops a coin which nobody dares to pick up or steal, since it is the judge’s sol. The coin then becomes the talk of the town, then a

105 tourist attraction, and finally, a year later, when the judge accidentally finds it and picks it up thinking it was a stroke of luck, the town goes back to normal and sighs in relief; "Contento de su buena suerte. esa noche revelo en el club: ‘iSeflores. me he encontrado un sol en la plaza!’ La provincia suspiro" (18).

This event, which shows that frequently villagers "submit to [the judge's) authority even when he is not deliberately exercising it” (Aldaz 51), points to the fact that certain historical characters, practices. beliefs, and superstitions assume mythical proportions and end up entrapping people even further in this cycle of alienation. In a tone of sad mockery, the narrator exposes the conciencia vencida. showing how subtlety and unconsciously certain behavioral patterns and power games take shape to the point that they are assimilated to everyday practice and are left undisputed:

Todos los crepiisculos cumplia cien vueltas exactas. Todas las tardes repetia dos doscientos y cincuenta y seis pasos que constituyen la vuelta del polvoriento cuadrado. .A las cuatro. la plaza hierve. a las cinco todavia es un lugar publico, pero a las seis es un desierto. Ninguna ley prohibe pasearse a esa hora. pero sea porque el cansancio acomete a los paseantes. sea porque sus estômagos reclaman la cena. a las seis la plaza deshabita.( 15)

Although both plots end in the defeat of the community, the sense of a downtrodden consciousness is slowly dispelled through the courageous acts of single individuals of the community who have been attributed with certain mythical and heroic qualities that eventually entice the whole community to fight in the revindication of their rights. Against critics who have accused Manuel Scorza of endowing his characters with supernatural powers that work against the author’s own neorrealist will to make the peasants devise concrete and real strategies to overcome their plight - like Chacon in Redoble-. Garabombo. the speaking horses, or Niflo Remigio. in Garabombo: the sleepless rider in El jinete insomne. and so forth

- Forgues adverts to the fact that such characters "tras cumplir su cometido. los personajes pierden en el momento de la accion decisiva su particularidad sobrehumana y mueren como hombres que son y no ban dejado de ser. pesa a los atributos miticos de los que el escritor los ha munido deliberadamente para llevar a cabo de manera simbolica un estrategia de ruptura con la realidad concreta alienada" (148). This conciencia

106 vencida which is relentlessly combated through the rise of a conciencia mitica will lead to a more

intermittent course of action on the part of the Indian comuneros in the remaining novels of the cycle.

Such heroes endowed with mythical forces usually develop a social and political consciousness

while imprisoned, for in prison they learn how to read and write and also come in contact with political

prisoners who exert a positive influence on those prisoners of rural origin who were never before faced

with the rhetoric of resistence and ongoing leftist struggle of national and/or continental reverberance. As

Garabombo put it to one of his friends. "Oyendo las discusiones de los politicos se aprende don Juan. ; Ya

no soy invisible!”(37). And through the refracted voice of the characters in Ladanza inmovil. the reader

learns that Scorza shares Lenin’s belief that ia carcel es la mejor escuela de los revolucionarios ’ (47). In

the context of prison, in other words, thecampesino struggle is inserted in the broader scope of socialist

activism and will no longer be a silent, invisible, or futile war.

In the novel Garabombo el invisible, the second of the cycle, the heroic acts of single characters

seen in Redoble take the shape of an organized struggle of various communities around the Cerro de Pasco

Corporation, as its fences advance farther and farther into the Indian territory. The structure of this novel

follows the same pattern ofRedoble. with two main plots and various tales built around it. One of these

plots has Garabombo as its protagonist, a peasant who suffers from the inexplicable disease of becoming

“invisible,” “transparent," at times. Curiously, he is invisible only to those who do not acknowledge his

existence. The people of his community who count on his leadership in strategizing the efforts to reclaim

their lands have no doubt that he exists. Only the local authorities who dismissed the community’s legal

petitions and landclaims do not “see” him: "Era invisible como eran invisibles los reclamos. los abusos y

las quejas”(209).

This story undoubtedly serves as another allegory for the suppression of the other, for the centuries of exploitation and alienation of the Indigenous communities in Latin America since colonization. When

Garabombo, who himself was startled by his invisibility, finally understands how powerful a weapon his

107 “non-being” could be, he spreads the word of his invisibility around, so as to encourage his fellow men to engage in this underground, invisible, but nonetheless concrete plan of action to take over the land. His invisibility, after all, could allow him to get into the district’s office unnoticed and steal the plans of the authorities' armed intervention as soon as it was discovered that the community was about to take over the land, since they were tired of trusting the legal system. Hereby Manuel Scorza “va subrayando como de un gesto enajenante puede nacer un acto subversive "( Forgues 28).

The second plot has Nino Remigio, an ugly, epileptic, irreverent, “badmouthing" hunchback - the fool of the town - as the prpotagonist. He represents “un peligro y una amenaza permanente contra el buen ftmcionamento del orden legal a causa de sus estupideces' y locura que se traducen por una constante falta de respeto e impertinencia con las autoridades, los principales y sus allegados" (Forgues 26). Afraid of

Remigio's humorous but no less critical and impertinent remarks, which could disrupt the order before local elections, authorities decide to pretend to like him, to respect his opinion and “to win him over,” in other words, to thus guarantee a peaceful environment as well as the political support of Remigio's people, the villagers in general. As he gains all that attention and seeming respect from the authorities, Remigio suddenly undergoes physical changes, becoming the most handsome young man in the town, over whom all single ladies, daughters of the authorial figures, start lighting to see whom he will marry.

He decides to marry the girl he had always admired platonically, from a distance, when he was still the town's ugly hunchback. On the day of the wedding, no one shows up, and finally he realizes he has fallen into a trap. Remigio’s tragedy symbolizes the dangers that may befall those Indians who - whether by innocence, personal interest, or economic necessity - trust the authorities or begin working for them as accomplices, spies, thugs, law enforcers, and the like, Remigio, as he waits by the altar and realizes his error, runs away in hiding and dies in the hands of the approaching troops which were on the way to stop Garabombo s organized “assentamiento " of the already mentioned farms. Remigio's fate is emblematic not only of what will happen to those who “sell out, " but of the worst and most tragic

108 consequences of the conciencia vencida. But in Garabombo’s words, the authorities will be charged and pay heavily even for subtle crimes as this, of slowly turning the people against themselves:

Pero ;nada de complice!: résulta ser la victima propiciatoria. inmolada en el altar de un sistema injusto e inhumano. como bien sehalan las palabras de Garabombo: ;Esto también se lo cobraremos a los hacendadosl’ Viene a representar. de alguna manera. la cara mas dolorosa y trâgica de la conciencia vencida' que no escapa de su condiciôn mâs que para entrar en la muerte. (Forgues 30-31)

One of many other pertinent aspects inGarabombo that is worth calling attention to. for it undescores the centuries of indigenous resistance, is that Garabombo. at each of his subversive and underground activities with the comuneros against the local officials, grows older faster and faster - "el jinete envejecia vertiginosamente"(266) and "el Jinete era ya un anciano" (244) - as if personifying the passage of time that corrresponds to

la Conquista y la Colonizacion, es decir un tiempo que véhicula la historia del despojo y explotaciôn de las poblaciones aborigènes. Un tiempo que en solo cincuenta anos. como senala Scorza, élimina un tercio de la humanidad y destruye lo que necesitô siglos para construirse. (Forgues 51)

Despite the longlasting struggle, this novel also ends in the defeat of the villagers, but not "on a note of total defeat" as Aldaz concludes in her analysis, because the comuneros. in the last chapter of the novel, "meet in el Bosque de Piedra' where they swear not to give up their fight" (Aldaz, 80). In fact, only in La tumba del relàmpago is it noticeable that Scorza begins to give up this somewhat optimistic or even romanticized tone with which he ends these first novels of the cycle. In La tumba. as the title itself suggests, Scorza seems to bury in a tombstone many of the dreams he entertained about the Marxist altemative, which he believed would enable a true reversal of the side-efTects of the capitalist system and the final concretization of the broader and long desired realization of the "Westem ideal." If this ideal is practically buried in the tombstone that is stmck by lightening, it culminates in total disbelief and crisis in his last novel La danza inmovil.

The other novels of Scorza's cycle could be used to further examine and exemplify the role such narrative techniques, and principally that of the myth, play in the fulfillment of Scorza’s goal of reversing

109 the course of Peruvian history. Instead of going through El jinete insomne. and Cantar de .Agapito Robles.

the third and fourth novels of the cycle, to see how in those novels Scorza further insists on the points

already made (of moving from a conciencia vencida to a conciencia mitica). it may be best to examine in

more detail La tumba del relàmpago. where Manuel Scorza proposes the final move from a mythical

consciousness to a historical consciousness, and examine La danza inmovil. where the modem myth is

given up altogether. By looking at how this transition takes place, one will better understand the ways in

which the author envisions the re-semantization of the Western myth, how that also proves a frustrated goal, and factors that may then lead him. as well as other writers, to explore more overtly the veins ofReal

Maravilloso in a final attempt to pace the Latin American novel and the reality it represents, with the discourse of Modemity.

As the conciencia mitica matures and the conciencia historica needs to be raised, the role of the

intellectual, who presumably heads the massive occupation attempts by several communities surrounding the Cerro de Pasco farms, becomes very explicit. In La tumba, Genaro Ledesma, the lawyer, who first comes in contact with the village when he serves one of the communities as their school teacher, takes up this role. His political involvement with the comuneros. who soon elect him as their mayor, results in his imprisonment. When he retums from prison, the villagers offer to finance his law degree with the promise that he would retum and head their legal work, since previous attempts were made to find lawyers who would embrace their cause. It tums out that all other lawyers only collected their fees but never really did much to prove, with the Landtitle of 1705,-' that the land occupied by Cerro de Pasco had always belonged to the Indians.

Ledesma then chooses to use a different strategy. Judging from his experience of the justice system which obviously sided with the hacendados. landowners, and foreign corporations such as Cerro de

One leams in the novel Garabombo that for a long period of time this document had been in the hands of the official authorities (for obvious reasons, one could say), but thanks to Garabombo's invisibility, he was able to get past the guards and win the document back to the community.

110 Pasco. Ledesma decides that instead of reclaiming the land through the legal channels, they should rather

organize a massive land occupation orasentamiento. which implied the meticulous planning and

organization of a simultaneous occupation act by all communities. Other important figures in the villages,

such as some of the heroic characters of the previous novels.- dedicate themselves exclusively to the

underground activity of raising the consciousness of all communities — even communities that shared old

rivalries and animosities - to join them in what should be a massive occupation which they called El Primer

Ejército Comunal (the First Popular Army).'^

Unfortunately, despite the participation of all communities and the well thought out planning of the occupation, which was supposed to take place on a specific night in October of 1962. this turns out to be another failed attempt. Just a few nights before the presumed date of occupation, a musician from

Yarusyacân has a dream in which he is told by Santa Maca (a character who appeared in previous novels and who was sanctified by the communities themselves) that this date has to be advanced because state authorities, having learned that the comuneros planned and organized the invasion of the farms, decide to send repressive armed forces to stop such occupation from occurring. The inability to have the peasants of all communities ready for the invasion at a much earlier date, of course, leads once again to the communitv’s defeat.

— In the same way that Scorza inspired real life activists with some of his fictitious characters, he also used intertextual continuity (Aldaz 109) allowing characters from previous novels in the cycle to reappear in this one, so as to emphasize, perhaps, that the struggle inLa tumba is part of a long tradition of efforts to break the chains of oppression.

^ In fact, on page 234 of the novel, while Ledesma is talking with Del Prado, a representative of the Peruvian Communist Party who tries to convince him to ask the party for its support in their struggle. Ledesma comes to the conclusion that what the people have managed to organize is indeed a movement of army-like proportions: “Si maflana estallara la lucha. probablemente serian diez mil. No creo que en el Peru se hayan presentado. nunca antes, condiciones tan favorables para una lucha armada. Acudo a ustedes para solicitar el apoyo del Partido." What would take place there was “El Vietnam de los Andes” as Genaro Ledesma concludes in a later conversation that appears on page 245.

I l l One interesting and no less significant sideplot ofLa tumba involves Remigio Villela’s

interpretation of certain ponchos that were woven by Anada. an old Indian woman, whom many people

deemed crazy and bewitched. Remigio Villela finds that many past events of the villagers' rebellious

history had been embroidered on the ponchos long before the events actually took place. Realizing their

prophetic traits, Remigio Villela dedicates much of his time to figuring out what these ponchos could

possibly foretell in regards to the comiineros' future stuggles. But. on one occasion, as he accompanies one

of the community’s organized troops on its way to liberate Jarria. another one of the haciendas taken over

by the Cerro de Pasco corporation. Remigio Villela suddenly recognizes the "Tower of the Future’’ that

Anada had embroidered in one of the ponchos. He stops, enters the tower, sure that there he will find more

revelations/prophecies on what the future beholds for them. However, in a symbolic gesture of what

Forgues has called conciencia histôrica, Remigio Villela abruptly changes his mind and refrains from

looking at these ponchos. Instead, he decides to set the tower on fire. When later asked for an explanation

by one of his comrades, he simply answers that he no longer wanted to find out about the future of the past.

He says that what he really needs to focus on is the future of the future.

This act of setting the tower on fire ma) be symbolic of Scorza’s conviction that eventually the

communities will reach this so-called historical consciousness and will no longer need to rely on supernatural and mythical phenomena to explain and interfere in the making of their future reality. It may mean, moreover, that the tower of the future - standing for the model of the modem enlightened cathedral -

is an inherited myth of the past (the colonial. European past) that should no longer serve as reference for their future accomplishments. This tower, in Scorza’s novel, parallels the modem cathedral, which likewise contained images of the parvenir of the modem, enlightened era that ended up restricting and stifling the possibilities of a future more attune to the specific Latin American realities. The spell of these prophetic ponchos that used to foretell the future needed to be broken in order to allow the comuneros. the campesinos to see their reality as it really was instead of hoping for a far-fetched future that had been

112 conceptualized according to a European ontology and episteme. Thus. Villela's attitude seems to signal the

mature realization that the time has come for another ruptural effort in the metanarrative.

By the time this historical consciousness is reached, the actual historical development of Peru and

remaining Latin American nations has itself undergone certain changes. The Western and modem myth of a

civilizational ideal, in the form of its Marxist alternative, has already lost its aura as a utopian thrust. In the

late seventies and early eighties the world begins to take up a far more complex configuration and the sole

implementation of Marxist forms of government and economical development as an alternative no longer

seems viable. Military coups, dictatorships, neo-colonialism and other forms of political and economic

dependency, and/or foreign interventions, not to mention the increasing isolation of Cuba as the only

American communist country, attest to the fact that the realization of the Marxist utopia began to look far

from realistic for Latin America.

In La danza inmôvil, Scorza’s last novel, the Western and modem myth of a civilizational ideal in

the form of its Marxist altemative is put under critical revision through the action of two main characters,

two guerrilla fighters in crisis as they re-evaluate their role in the overall stmggle for liberation in Latin

America. The primary plot is, like most of Scorza’s novels, divided into two subplots. The first one

recounts the life of Santiago, an activist stationed in Paris, who, while awaiting orders to go fight in Peru,

gets romantically involved and chooses to give up the revolution in the name of love, that is, in the name of

his personal life instead of the life of the guerrilla. In the second subplot Nicolas is the protagonist. His life

as a political activist is replayed, as he takes a trip on a raft down the amazon river after escaping from

Pern’s highest national security prison of El Sepa to inform the movement about Bodar, a traitor, who leaks

information on the illegal trafficking of arms on the part of the movement to the Pemvian national guard.

At the end of the novel the two sub-plots come together, denoting that, although the characters have opted for two opposing paths, one still in favor of the liberation stmggle and in denial of his personal life, and the

113 other against the struggle and in favor of a life of his own. both paths will lead to the same end result: doubt, hopelessness, and disbelief in what once signified and gave meaning to their whole existence.

Nicolas, when he was caught on his trip down the river and tied onto a Tangarana tree and eaten alive by an army of killer ants, ends up thinking that Santiago’s selfish choice not to continue in the revolution might have been better than his choice of wasting his life for the revolution. Similarly. Santiago who followed his heart, his personal desires, at the end wonders whether Nicolas has not made the best choice. The novel ends with the triumph of ambiguity, uncertainty, typical of the postmodern momentum, that is. of the contemporary new order.

An ending such as this, especially if compared with the novels of the cycle "La Guerra

Silenciosa.” is indeed symptomatic of a change in Scorza’s own perception or attitude before local, regional, and global realities, and before the Marxist ideal he previously entertained and so hardly fought for through his creative endeavors and his journalistic career. Perhaps, as he attempted to deconstruct the metanarrative in which the Western myth was embedded, by pointing to its various flaws, he realized that the biggest of all flaws was his continual insistence on perpetrating the Western ideal of a perfect nation through the neorrealist novel. Despite all technical innovations that allowed Scorza to portray reality in a more heterogeneous fashion, by bringing to the foreground of his narratives those who have been left outside history, by transforming the downtrodden consciousness into a historical consciousness, the novel would always reinforce some values, some myths, some truths, over others, in a time were none such values or beliefs would function as a universal or absolute answer. And it is perhaps because Scorza comes to this realization of the so-to-speak limitedness or reductive character of this discursive practice, of his own metanarrative, and the powerlessness of his own cathedral, that the leitmotiv ofLa Danza is precisely the role literature has acquired at this (post)modem age. There are clear indications that Scorza engages in the postmodern discussion of metafiction discussed in Chapter Two. on the aesthetics of Modernity and

Postmodemity.

114 In the first scene of the novel, for instance, the reader is inserted in the context of a conversation

among an editor of Ediciones Uni verso (a Parisian publishing house), a Latin American writer exiled in

Paris (whose reality, ideals, dreams, and doubts are projected onto the two characters already mentioned

(Santiago and Nicolas) and Vaca Sagrada (the assistant to the editor, who is in charge of a series dedicated to Latin American novels). In fact, the whole of the novel La danza inmôvil takes place through flashbacks that go back to the scene of their conversation over lunch at a bohemian restaurant, in which the writer tries to “sell” the ideas of his prospective novel to the editor and his assistant.

The humorous and ironic tone with which the telling of his envisioned plots are interlaced with his own thoughts as to what the editor is thinking (how the editor and assistant are “buying into" his plots) is indicative of Scorza’s own re-evaluation of “the art of fiction.” The idea the reader extracts from the novel's leitmotiv is that the Scorza himself is questioning/antagonizing the socio-political role of literature.

And Scorza, out of many of the Latin American neo-realist writers, is known for being the one who truly believed literature has to be committed in the struggle for social change. In the passage below, even though it is voiced through the ironic remarks of Vaca Sagrada. the assistant to the editor, one finds refracted some of Scorza’s doubts:

Volviendo a lo suyo. ^como se titula el libro?- pregunto Vaca sagrada. -La Danza Inmôvil. -Sugerente titulo. Lastima que también esta vez sus personajes sean peligrosos fanaticos. "Hablar de politica en un libro es como disparar un pistoletazo en medio de un concierto. ” Todos conocemos la famosa frase de Stendhal, n 'est pasi Hoy mas vigente que nunca. El arte al servicio de la politica degenera en propaganda. La obra de arte es un fin en si; no puede ser de ninguna manera un puente. (232)

Such comments, especially the realization that a rather political and pamphletarian literature amounts to nothing more than the construction of an imperfect chapel, leads to an evaluation of elements of a metaliterary nature, inasmuch as they allude to questions such as the Sartrian concept of the committedness of art, the function of literature, authorial intention, even the problem of novel marketing, but especially to the role Latin American writers play within this new historical context. As the passage below denotes, all

115 such issues seem to be part of the power and language games with which Foucault and Lyotard describe the

modem era. This scene allegorizes the process of getting a novel published as a casual game of power, of

winners and losers:

la partida se jugaria desde el comienzo. si es que yo. antes de inicarla. no la habia ya perdido en México. En las ôrdenes que su editor imparte almaitre. un escritor puede antever su futuro. La sofisticaciôn de ios platos o la rebajada calidad de los vinos, y hasta la manera con que el Editor los solicita, prefiguran el veredicto del Comité de Lectura. (15)

And: Sabia bien que aunque propusiera "Don Quijote”, "Madame Bovary". "El Proceso" o "Cien Anos de Soledad”, Vaca Sagrada me condenarfa sin apelaciôn. Y ya que perderfa el editor, por lo menos no me perderfa el almuerzo. (15)

When, after deciding what dishes to order, the editor finally asks the writer to tell him about his prospective book, one is presented with Vaca sagrada's counterreactions, who. impersonating to some extent the role of the devil's advocate, always retorts the ideas exposed by the writer, belittling the author's intentions and demythicizing the overall role of the Latin American writer:

-Estoy escribiendo la historia de un guerrillero que agoniza amarrado a un drbol de la Amazonia, que se llama tangarana... -Tangarana vulgaris... -Mientras muere. el personaje remémora su vida y mâs concretamente su fuga. Porque ha escapado de la prisiôn para matar a un delator y salvar asi [...] Desciende por los rios... -"Se les tragô da selva' -cortô Vaca Sagrada. citando malvadamente el cérebre final de "La Vorâgine ". con la cual los "novelistas urbanos" pretenden sepultar sin apelaciôn otras novelas en América Latina. -No exactamente-me defend!-. En mi libro hay personajes que narran la historia desde Paris... -Los latinamericanos fracasan escribiendo sobre Paris, sentenciô Vaca Sagrada-.[...] -Estoy escribiendo también un relato sobre una vieja condesa francesa. Vaca Sagrada intervino: -Una historia de la nobleza francesa escrita por un sudamericano sin titulos...^Por qué no? -Y otra novela-insisti-. que si bien es cierto no transcurre en Paris, alude mâs a Europa que si sucediera en ella. El personaje central es un genio. un loco que un buen dia se autonombra Almirante. (18)

And a very serious comment on the role of Latin American writers of the boom generation made by Vaca

Sagrada, goes as follows:

-Los lectores de la literatura latinoamericana viven en los pantanos del error. Incluso los creadores. los garcia marquez, los carpentier. los borges. los vargasllosa. los sabato. los rulfo. los spota y

1 16 otros habitantes de esa mancha de cuyos nombres prefiero no acordarme. creen mostrar la Latinoamérica profunda. En realidad no e.xpresan la estructura subyacente. conflictuada por sintagmas siempre Infortunados. Los creadores son siempre inconscientes. Cervantes no sabia que era el autor de El Quijote... -Y hasta su mismo paisano Arguedas - recalcô Vaca Sagrada dirigiéndose a mi - ignorô también que la verdadera realidad de sus novelas no era el drama de la traumatizada sociedad indigena sino que la bûsqueda de su padre. Quienes muestran el incontingente esencial en una sociedad dada en el espacio-tiempo lôgico o metalôgico (y aqui habria que remitirse a ciertos capitulos de Husserl), no son nunca los presuntos creadores sino los semiôticos. pues la bûsqueda de estructuras lôgico o conceptuales no esta al alcance de los escritores sino de los que practican esa disciplina, vulgo critica. La verdadera creaciôn radica, pues, en la critica. ( 16)

The number of scenes Scorza dedicates to the discussion of the role of literature in general, and the

role of the Latin American writer in particular, corroborates the argument in this study that Scorza. after the cycle “La Guerra Silenciosa.” is becoming more of a postmodern himself, that he may be losing some of his previous faith in helping reform the system via literature; that his literary production, having at times become too pamphletarian. or. as Goic would say. "programatic" (217) due to his previous strong beliefs, instead of being able to demythicize the metanarrative, eventually reinforced it as a discourse practice. The fact that Scorza becomes increasingly aware of this process, from his first to his last novel, may be what leads him to incorporate such metate.xtual questions of form versus content, o f means o f expression, o f a broader and far more complex configuration of what is real and what is fictional, into the novelistic fabric itself. Even the novel, as the modem mode of expression, loses its mythical aura and is questioned and ridiculed by Vaca Sagrada (the name Vaca Sagrada. ironically, remits to myth!).

In La danza. where the levels between reality and imagination are so blurred, one thing does become clear: that the author, through his socio-political literary activity, can no longer help intervene in the re-structuring of a given reality. To illustrate this ambiguity and fragmentation of the subject (whether the individual subject or a whole collectivity) and the postmodern reality with specific examples, one should turn to the initial scene of the novel where Scorza makes explicit the inability to distinguish authorial authority: when the fictional writer is telling the editor and his assistant about his novel {La danza. the novel the reader is reading or La danza as it is being conceived in the mind of the fictional writer), they

117 suddenly spot the entrance of some notorious figures among whom is Manuel Scorza himself: “Del bar

salieron Isaura Veron, Salomon Resnik. Ana Taquini y Manuel Scorza. Vaca Sagrada los vio y, con su

equivocada creencia de que acercarse a los inteligentes lo hace a uno inteligente, los saludo

obsequiosamente y tratô de demorarse"(14).

In this instance, the author Manuel Scorza, the famous, renowned and real writer, figures as a

fictional and secondary character in the novel, while the fictional author becomes the real author in that

specific context. In the same way. in that initial scene, the novelLa danza itself has not even materialized

yet. for it is only being exposed as an idea for a prospective novel that still needs the editor’s approval to be

written and published. The effect Scorza creates in this novel is similar to what in McHale's words takes

place in “Borges y yo.” i.e.. a labyrinth in which “the real author and the inscribed fictional author is lost in

the shuffle of the selves” for. in narratives that begin to absorb this new cultural, political and socio-

ideological postmodern condition, a subject (a truth) of cognition is constructed only to be deconstructed

again, “dispersing it among the various authorial inscriptions” (37).

Apparently, it is only in this last novel that Scorza indeed faces head-on the fact that the novel

itself, as the literary form or process through which he construes his and the nation's ideals, has to be

rethought and requestioned. Even though in the previous novels, as has been shown. Scorza innovates the

acculturated narrative techniques and the discursive modes, it is only in La danza that metatextual -

metafictional - concerns are overtly brought into question and receive an equally important status next to

elements concerning content.

Just like the faith in the intellectual and in the guerrilla fighter begins to dwindle in his last novel,

so does the role o f the writer. In La danza inmôvil. Scorza seems to lose faith in the writer, not only in

relation to his role as the carrier or deliverer of truths and myths, but also in his ability to indeed represent the marginalized groups in their struggles by trying to re-present their reality. As he questions the actual means of representation, he is indeed demonstrating to have arrived at that faithlessness that is typical of

118 postmodem writers. He is, in fact, giving up the aesthetics of the beautiful and problematizing, the

aesthetics of the sublime. There seems to be a relation between his loss o f faith in an ideal society with his

loss of faith in writing. The lack of structure, of chronological and narratological order, perhaps betrays the

author’s own loss of faith in contributing to the establishment of a more fair, more ideal society.

This change in perspective, as has been contended, may indicate not only a shift in Scorza's

attitude in relation to the discourse of Modernity, and the reaching of the Western myth of an ideal reality.

It also indicates that the neorrealist novel, entrapped in the language and power games of which Lyotard

speaks, needs to pave the way to a different kind of narrative that will indeed break free from such

metanarrative practices. This is what the postmodern narrative supposedly does: characters belonging to a

marginalized group are no longer guided by the class of liberal and/or leftist intellectuals of the bourgeoisie

who, in solidarity, are carriers of a truth which the underprivileged and alienated masses are unable to

comprehend and arrive at on their own.

What one sees occurring is the abandonment of his earlier binary worldvision, and his previous

ability to accurately pinpoint what he saw as the causes of all practices of injustice, exploitation, and

underdevelopment in Latin America. This inability of maintaining a clear critical view of reality remits us to McHale's discussion on Constructing Postmodernism. There he endorses Dick Higgins's view on postmodern writing, arguing that writing modernist or postmodernist texts is a question of subject cognition or postcognition. From Higgins's perspective, cognition, as a modem (modernist) writing mode, should be understood as the writer’s effort to focus "on issues of self and identity in the tradition of expressionism, cubism, Freudian psychology [...], at the extreme limit, existentialism," while postcognition should be understood as the writing mode in which "issues of identity and the subject of cognition dwindle in importance. The persona of the artist is submerged in the gestalt of the artwork, and the mythic image of the artist, so strong in modem ism, is weakened nearly to the point of obliteration" (32).

1 9 In fact, this shift from a cognitive to a postcognitive attitude or perspective, is very visible in

Scorza's novels. Whereas in the novels of the cycle the role of the author, the intellectual, the narrator, and of the protagonists is clearly that of pursuers or even embodiments of a truth, of the struggle o f a whole nation (Peru) or a whole continent (Latin America) towards the fulfillment of an alternative civilization ideal through the assertion of the Continent’s Otherness, that is. its identity in relation to the Western world and its right to partake of the overall Western myth of technological advancement, human progress and autonomy; in the last novel, this cognitive process of establishing an identity, of formulating a specific version of an absolute truth and paradigmatic ideal dwindles and succumbs in the midst of fragmented realities that will not ever be able to recover the myth of a structural centrality and cohesion. The modem cathedral, one concludes, has really exploded, and all one can attempt to build in its place is an autochthonous cathedral, one that is more true to one's specific reality, no matter if at the end. this cathedral will look more like an Imperfect Chapel, as Pepetela would say.

120 CHAPTER 4

IMPERFECT CHAPELS

Os homens constroem coisas, mas antes imaginam-nas enquanto projetos perfeitos. Todavia. o acto de construçào é doloroso, e freqiientemente se chega à conclusâo de que sào sempre capelas imperfeitas. (Pepetela.Expresso )

4.1 Evolution of the Lusophone-African novel - From the perfect Modem Cathedral to Imperfect

Chapels

Even though the evolutionary path and the period of post-Independence Lusophone African

Literature differ slightly from that of Latin America, just like the latter, the Lusophone African Literature eventually resorts to the Rea/ Maravilloso narrative. As was demonstrated in Chapter Two. in Latin

America, after Independence is won. writers of most Latin American nations take on the task of creating a

foundational discourse in which the concept of nation is allegorized through the romance sentimental. The realist novel emerges out of these allegorical romances, profoundly influenced by the European

Enlightenment Project insofar as it reflects, especially during the latter part of the 19'*' century, the scientific ideas of Positivism and Determinism that culminate in the naturalist narrative.

But because the realist genre is committed mainly to the metanarrative and does not objectively problematize the plight of the forgotten and marginalized segments of society. Latin American writers eventually turn to the neorrealist novel, which overtly criticizes the bourgeosie and its capitalist enterprises at the same time as it attempts to present socio-political and ideological alternatives to those sectors not addressed by the dominant class. However, it is possible to determine that the more neorrealists engage in the task of deconstructing the reality of the hegemonic class, the more they feel the need to abandon realist

121 descriptions of reality to bring into life the peripheral, marginalized, and seemingly magical and mythical worlds of those left outside the official history and the official metanarrative practices. This is when Latin

Americans begin writing Real Maravilloso novels.

In an analysis of the literary production in Angola since its Independence in 1975. one realizes that the appearance ofReal Maravilloso in the Luso-African literature is also observable, but not because it is intertextually influenced by Latin American narratives, or because it copied an exclusively Latin

American literary phenomenon and adapted it to its own needs.' It is because Lusophone African nations establish a similarly antagonistic relation to the European metropolis politically, socially, economically, and culturally that they feel the need to fictionalize realities that seem less realistic to Europe but more truthful to the imaginary of daily life in Africa. Thus, in order to face modernization on their own terms.

Lusophone African writers relentlessly abandon the European realist novel and experiment with literary modes which better voice their way of viewing the world, their own way of envisioning a “modem" cathedral.

In view of this, our main interest in this chapter is to examine the literary evolution of post-

Independence Lusophone Africa to determine how theReal Maravilloso begins to emerge. It may. however, be constructive to briefly examine the literary sphere in the Lusophone African region during pre-

Independence days.

4.1.1. Conciencia vencicla - The wounded land

One notices, for example, that before Independence, authors in Mozambique, Angola, and Cape

Verde did not yet promote and problematize what one now calls a modern idea of nation. The modem

' It should be noted that up to this point there have been no exhaustive studies proving that there has been an intertextual relation between Latin American Literature and that of Lusophone Africa. In his studies of Lusophone Africa. Salvato Trigo compares this literature with that produced in Brazil as well as

122 concept ofpàtria, of nation - as Homi Bhabha conveys it. and which was presented in Chapter Two - begins to play an important role in literature only after the Lusophone African territories begin to free themselves from Portuguese rule. Before that, while the dominant class of Portuguese colonists referred to

Portugal as their nation, their Heimat or homeland, the African peoples in these regions had completely lost the right to speak of a place, of a culture, and of a reality they identified with as their own, having been usurped of their lands and cultures. In the novel .4 Chaga. which will be discussed in more detail Inter, the colonists frequently thought of Angola in the following terms: "Isto é terra de negros. A Patria é em

Portugal, que fica la na Europa" (Soromenho, 125). However, in this "terra de negros,” the white ruling class did not allow the blacks to govern the land the whites acknowledged as belonging to Africans.

The fact that the concept of a modern nation had not objectively been idealized should not suggest, however, that during the pre-Independence period there have not been any movements of resistance and liberation, or any concrete endeavors that would lead to the consciousness that Africa needed to be freed from colonialism. Just like in Latin America, it was usually the literati and the segment of intellectuals who engaged in political activities who tried to raise the awareness of the collectivity concerning their position as colonial subjects towards Portugal. Such politico-literary initiatives, however, were less noticeable in prose writing than in poetry and in the critical literature of the pre-Independence phase.

In fact, quite a significant number of literary magazines and periodicals, which began to question the role of writers and their political commitment in establishing a pro-Independence movement, popped up in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Sâo Tomé e Principe from the 1920s onwards. Their main preoccupation was undoubtedly to raise the population's awareness towards the impoverishing consequences of the colonial enterprise and the need to decolonize both people’s political and cultural mentality. Modernity being in full swing in Europe and America during the first part of the 20'*' century, it that produced in African-America and in Portugal. In Pepetela’s novels one also gets the indication that the

123 probably seemed inconceivable to belong to a political territory that was still under the rule of a European colonial power. It must, in fact, have felt odd. if not ironic, to be ruled by nations which, at home, pursued the establishment of modem ideals, but which, in their overseas colonies, implemented pre-modem or perhaps anti-modem strategies of domination in their expansionist “developmental projects."

The Lusophone African intelligentsia realized that if their present reality of oppression were to change, it would be time to attune their literary and political discourses to the modem sensibility and reverse their current historical course by defying the discourse of foreign domination. Thus, the more educated segments of the Lusophone colonial society felt the urgent need to articulate a discourse of liberation, for it would only be through their independence from Portugal that these societies would be able to destroy the colonial cathedral that had been erected there, in order for them to build a new and modem, but no less African, cathedral in its place.

Perhaps one of the most illustrative examples of prose writing before Independence can be found in Casto Soromenho's prolific work. In his realist novels one sees his commitment to portraying the colonial period reality as it really was. In order to do that, he fictionalized the image of the colonial cathedral, metaphorically speaking, showing what the colonial territory looked like, how it was structured as a colony, and how its various institutions functioned. By so doing, he demythified the colonial enterprise. In other words. Soromenho presented Africans, as well as the European reader, with a realistic picture of the Angolan reality that countered the usually idealized portrayals of Africa.

In Europe the images shown of Africa were those of prosperity, of wealth, of inexhaustible human and natural resources; Europeans, especially the Portuguese, seemed to have no clue of what Africa really looked like after the European colonial settlements were established and the native populations subjugated.

The colonizers, obviously, never portrayed the image of Africa as that depleted and abandoned nowhere land, which was left to rot as soon as Europe shifted its economic and commercial interest to the East. The

literature being read by African students in Lisbon in the 1960s is either of European origin or Brazilian.

124 title A Chaga, of Soromenho s last novel, which can be translated as wound or sore, conveys exactly how wounded and damaged Africa was ever since Europeans set foot in that region. Angola, as this author portrays, had been explored and exploited to its last resources and wealth, but the wounds were left open, as the Portuguese Crown’s interest was gone. It becomes clear that the Portuguese Crown had abandoned even its own bureaucratic and military system after they gave up the diamond mines in Angola or the rubber and wax extraction sites in favor of new trade markets elsewhere.

After their economic goals had changed, Angola served no other purpose than becoming the depository of Portuguese outlaws. In A Chaga. the colonist characters refer to Angola as “o Deposito de

Degredados de Luanda” (137), to which all Portuguese criminals and no-goods were shipped; or as "terra morta,” where no seeds o f utopia, of dreams of Independence, of prosperity, or nationhood could be sown

( 192). The land was not only wounded, but had become barren as well.

As mentioned above, Soromenho does not develop a concept of nation in his novels, but he does take upon himself the task of registering the colonial history from the point of view of someone living in

Africa and not someone who, from the metropolis, records data that are relevant only in economic archives.

Thus, Soromenho "records” the life situation of the colonists, describing in detail the hierarchies that had been established among the various ranks in the Portuguese army and in the administration edifice.

Soromenho also exposes the living conditions of the ordinary Portuguese who had not been sent there to manage any official posts, but to work in the labor camps and mines. He also portrays the lives of those who where sent there simply to populate the regions under Portuguese rule with more people of their own kind so as to "europeanize,” "civilize” or whiten the race and the various cultures of African origin. The fact that Soromenho included characters that represent these various groups of people is of extreme importance. It is perhaps the first time in Lusophone African Literature that the class o f people who is going to become the crioulized bourgeoisie in Angola is ficitonalized. It explains the origin of a class and identity problem that will recur in novels by the neorrealist writers like Pepetela, who deal with the new

125 local bourgoisie, who has to deal with questions such cultural, racial, and tribal identity. Many a times, the new Angolan individual of the bourgeoisie felt completely misplaced, as if he did not belong anywhere.

Soromenho s narratives exposed the reality in Angola and can therefore be considered the initial grounding step that led to a subsequent strong discourse of resistance (or tradition of rupture). Even though

Soromenho never really explored an overt discourse of dissent against the power of Colonialism, the exploitation and enslavement of the native population, which had been nullified to the level of objects through slavery and oppression, his realistic depiction of Angola did point to the existence of such problems. As he fictionalized the life of the colonist, by antinomy, he portrayed what the native Africans had been subject to since the Portuguese had set foot there. In X Chaga, the life stories of the natives function rather as subplots in which the African enslaved characters act in secondary roles to those of the

Portuguese protagonists.

Soromenho demonstrated that Angola did serve the purposes of Europe’s modernization, but, in and of itself, it was nothing but a huge reservoir from which the Portuguese could draw whatever was of interest for their developmental project at home. Africa was not considered a place with a life of its own, or a place with the potential of self-development, as would be expected in the modem age. As Lourenço, one of the only few critically aware and partially educated colonists in A Chaga stated, "A realidade em .Africa

é toda ao contrario da propaganda que delà fazem em Portugal, o que nâo admira, porque hâ duas Àfricas, a dos negros e a dos colonialistas. Aqui hà samente espaça e tempo, mas tim tempo fora do nosso tempo, percebes? É um tempo sem epoca. So os livros me tém libertado deste tempo morto" (193, emphasis added).

The words of this colonist reveal that during the colonial period the dominant class - obviously made up mainly of first and second generation Portuguese - had not yet awoken to the discourse of

Modernity. Angola was shown as this mythical and timeless place, immune to the action of History, of

126 development, of modernization. Modernity, on the part of the metropolis, was probably understood as a

European invention, whose concepts were not applicable to the colonies.

The administrative system the first Portuguese explorers and colonists had erected in the colonies was not in the least emulating, the modem ideals of a nation. The “cathedral” they had built there resembled the European medieval cathedral, against which the emerging modem European men were targeting their critique and against which the Enlightenment Project had fought. Wha: Europeans erected in

Africa was similar to. if not worse than, the power games and machinations of Absolutism before the

Renaissance. If in Europe there were “Fausts” fighting to free the masses from the power of the Church and the Monarchy by arguing that the new modem individual had the freewill and the capacity to carry out his own dreams, this was not true for the peoples in Africa, who, from the Portuguese point of view, were not yet “ready” for modernization, as if they were in a pre-modem evolutionary stage.

By comparison, if one recalls the postcolonial situation in Latin America, one realizes that as early as the 19* century, writers there were strongly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and were formulating a nation-building narrative that enabled Latin Americans to create a sense of identity, of historical temporality, of developing their own forms of government, their cultural and economic enterprises, always keeping in mind that they should try, at least, to respect their own idiosyncrasies, their own mythical world and ideals in their developmental projects. In Lusophone Africa, this was not so. because the colonists there, unlike those in Latin America, did not see Africa as their potential new homeland. So. why would they invest and try to change things for the better in Africa?

Soromenho’s novels, from the first ones written in the 30s, to .-f \laravilhosa Viagem dos

Exploradores Portugueses ( 1946-1948), Terra Morta ( 1949) and A Chaga ( 1969), are relatively contemporary to the period of independence, but do not indicate that there was any ardent advocacy/promotion of enlightened ideals. Soromenho does appropriate the European realist novel as an instrument of expression, but unlike the post-Independence generation. Soromenho does not seem to bother

127 with, and discuss, the European ideals brought forth with the Enlightenment through some of his

characters. Thus, even though his novels are one of the first steps in the African discourse of resistance.

they can be acknowledged as metanarratives, in Lyotard’s definition of the term, inasmuch as they portray

events from the point of view of those in power.

The colonists, no doubt, were powerless in relation to Europe, more specifically to Portugal, but

from the point of view of Africans, the fact that Soromenho was reflecting the mentality and the life of the

colonists was yet a way to empower the ideology of the dominant class. Justice should be made in

admitting that Soromenho did this with a critical eye. but not yet with the poignant critique with which the neorrealists, later, will address the colonial situation. The African subjects in his novels have no voice of their own. In the most fortunate cases, some mulattos - the sons of white colonists with black women - are shown as tom by ambiguity, not knowing where and to whom they belong, or whom they should serve.

The hegemonic voices throughout the novels are. no doubt, those of army and administrative officials and of the illiterate, destitute, powerless, and uncritical “portugueses de segunda mào."

In their conversations, these second-hand Portuguese seem to convey that they hate their

Portuguese counterparts in higher positions who treat them as inferiors and unequals. But when it comes to comparing themselves to their black fellows (the native Africans and even their mulatto offspring) these colonists take on an attitude of superiority, of arrogance, and even one of defense of the colonial enterprise which not only victimized the natives but also the communities of colonists they are a part of. The excerpt below shows how they belittled the Africans, how superior they felt in relation to them, and how easy it had always been to manipulate the “sobas, " the "cabecinhas," and the '"mainmbos" because of their inferiority, naivité, and ignorance:

- [...] O que é preciso é ter mào neles e nào hesitar no momento prôprio. A ûnica coisa que o negro admira é a força. Sâo crianças grandes, mas viciosas. O negro é mandriào e velhaco. Todos nos que andamos por estas terras hâ uns anos sabemos que ele admira o branco e aceita o castigo quando é Justo; mas admira-nos porque reconhece a nossa superioridade, a nossa força. -Là isso é verdade. Nâo gostam é de trabalhar. Manda-los para as minas é o pior castigo que se Ihes pode dar. Preferem a palmatôria e o chicote ao contrato de trabalho [...]

1 2 8 -Esses selvagens sabem là o que é a familia. Se eles até vendem os fïlhos como se fossem gado! (Soromenho. 87)

Despite capitalizing on the portrayal of the colonists and not allowing a protagonist role to the

native African in his depiction of a wounded Angola, Soromenho does insinuate that the native African

individuals have not completely succumbed to the mistreatment, the exploitation, and the oppression they

are subjected to. Even though the Africans were de-tribalized and divided, in order to be dominated and

objectified, they are shown as people who obstinately give signs of resistance and do not give in to the

pressures of Portuguese acculturation. The Portuguese, in their attempt at subjugating and turning the

native Africans into a profitable source of labor, had no time to see the native Africans as human beings

belonging to a culture which had its own traditions, language, values, and rites. From hindsight, this

unfortunate attitude of disregard toward the natives allowed the latter to maintain some of their traditions,

such as their music, their rituals, and the beat of their drum, which from the Portuguese point of view, were

nothing but demonstrations of Africa’s savagery. According to a colonist in A Chaga. the natives

Odeiam o branco, o estrangeiro, hoje mais do que ontem. Nào estâo vencidos. Estas a ouvir este batuque, mas nào sabes o que ele significa. Para os brancos, o batuque é festa, libertinagem. bebedeira. Mas para eles é muito diferenle. Este é um batuque religiose. [■■■] O tambor é a grande voz da Africa. Nunca me esqueci do que me disse uum africano que conheci em Benguela; ‘So se conhece a Africa depois de se compreenderem todos os toques de tambores. Quando se deixarem de ouvir os tam bores, a Africa estara morta.’ (191, emphasis added)

4.1.2. The Modem Cathedral - Forging the concept of a modem nation

By having a colonist acknowledge the power of the drumbeat in A Chaga, Soromenho might be

insinuating that, even though this novel is about the saga of the colonists, the natives’ saga is yet to be deciphered and understood. The natives’ narrative is being told through the dmms, but the Portuguese do not know this language and cannot unravel its meaning. The colonists did not understand that behind that apparent barbaric ritual of drumbeating, a song of solidarity and resistance was flowing from place to place, from one ethnic community to another, thus enabling the native African to survive through the centuries of colonization and be willing, after Independence, to start re-creating Africa. As Latin

129 Americans had to do when they became independent from Spain, a century and a half earlier, Luso-

Africans would also have to formulate and devise their nation-building projects in which pertinent

questions such as language, forms of government, education, economy, and culture would have to be

raised, discussed, and implemented. In order to do that, however, the masses of oppressed and marginalized

people would have to awaken from their apparent lethargy and apathy. Luckily, by the time Angola gained

its independence, most writers had had the opportunity to see. observe, and learn from other literary experiences in Africa and abroad, to the extent that their foundational discourses would differ from the one produced in Latin America.

The foundational discourse in Angola, for instance, will not idealize their nation in the same way

Latin Americans did. Rather than attempting to formulate the myth of an ideal couple that would be allegorical of the new Latin American nation, post-Independence writers in Lusophone Africa will problematize the ambiguous role of the mulatto, which is emblematic of the mixture of both the African and the European races and traditions, and will attempt to come up with the creation of a new individual, aware of himself, his idiosyncrasies, uniqueness, and potential. Thus, instead of doing what Latin

Americans did, namely to romanticize the new nation through "love story" tales of the romance sentimental, they follow, so-to-speak, Castro Soromenho s footsteps describing their reality without that idealism seen in the Latin American foundational discourse.

Unlike Soromenho, who explores the realist narrative, the first generation of Post-Independence writers explores the veins of Neorrealism. li is as if they skipped the long and winding phase through which Latin Americans went before their writers started questioning and reversing the metanarrative of power legitimation in order to propose the conceptualization of a modem nation, a nation-building narrative that faced the difficult reality of healing the wounds and reconstructing the ruins from the

European colonial cathedral. Thus, a literary process that lasted over a century and a half to mature in Latin

America developed in a span of about three decades in Lusophone Africa, and in this particular case, in

130 Angola .where from a foundational discourse to the emergence of a Real Maravilloso narrative, the process of evolution and maturation was much faster and less idealized.

African writers and African intellectual leaders had much to profit from the political experience undergone by other ex-colonial nations, which pioneered the process of independization and laid the foundation for Modem Cathedrals outside Europe, outside the context in which Faust began to build the perfect modem nation. Lusophone African writers, for example, knew that they could not take advantage of a practically nonexistent capitalist force that had propelled the constmction of the European Project of

Enlightenment. They knew also that even if they had a solid capitalist base on which to begin the reconstruction of their nation, this base, resting on the pillars of colonialism, would not be as solid as it had appeared to Faust and to the European intelligentsia as a whole.

Angolan writers were able to draw meaning from the experience of the modem adventures from within and without Europe and were able to draw a similar conclusion to that of Marx, that “all that is solid melts into air.” Being able to profit from the ideas of European. American. Caribbean. African, and other intellectuals belonging to the tradition of mpture - which questioned Modemity from within, such as those with which Marx had already problematized the implementation of modem nations in Europe, and those with which Frantz Fanon, to mention only one more who criticized in specific terms the European colonial enterprise - Lusophone African writers realized that their cathedral, their nation, would have to create a foundational base that would avoid some of the structural problems that could emerge out of capitalism or socialism. If Faust, in Goethe’s novel, had envisioned Modemity to be built on the three pillars of rationality, creative instinct and capital, the African writers knew they would have to promote the invention of a different project; one that would not necessarily have to rely on the “modem ’capitalist ideology the

European colonial project had implemented in its overseas territories, but on the rational capacity and the creative and aesthetic instincts of their own people.

131 Therefore, it is only logical to see that the writers emerging right after Independence - engaged in the task of rebuilding the nation and forming a collective identity through a national literary discourse - choose the neorrealist narrative, because, as Cedomil Goic puts it. it is the vehicle that picks up on the strong socio-political conception of literature, denouncing a specific reality, its contradictions, its complexity. The neorrealist novel is broader and allows " la incorporacion de esteras nuevas de origen o afincamiento popular, con un significativo trasfondo antropologico [...], que hacen del mito y de la conciencia mitico popular, las creencias. el fundamento de un mundo. de un orden y de una dignidad sorprendentes" (221 ).

4.1.3 Mythical consciousness

In opting for the neorrealist novel in Lusophone Africa, the writers’ intent was undoubtedly to update not only the socio-cultural and political discourse (coping with the ambiguity and contradictions between traditional and Western thoughts, stepping out of the limbo) of the newly-born nations but also the literary discourse in order to "trabalhar a sensibilidade angolana com critérios de modemidade ” (Laranjeira

95). Modemity here, of course, is understood as Marshall Berman described it. that is. as a critical process that takes modem ideas not without critically scrutinizing their usefulness and effectiveness. Thus.

Lusophone African writers, having been exposed to ideas of modernization through the colonial enterprise and the following socio-cultural. political, and literary dialogue between the Portuguese metropolis and the ex-colonies, take these ideas, work them out critically in a spiral and evolutionary movement, so as to try’ to adopt, adapt, and adjust the modem ideas to their own independization and national interests.

Thus, since the nation-building process is evolutionary, a process in which the critical maturation of ideas and the solidification of ideological values is crucial, it becomes clear that the Angolan post-

Independence discourse evolves from the narrative practices they inherit from Europe and which had been developed by pre-Independence writers such as those Soromenho discussed earlier. One has to remember

132 that when the novel emerged in Europe, it was meant as a critical instrument which, little by little, was

appropriated by the bourgeoisie ruling class in order to forge its own ideology, thus becoming a

metanarrative. This having been said, it is understandable that most of the novels by Artur Maurfcio

Pestana dos Santos, or Pepetela. for instance, just like those of Soromenho. are structured after the

traditional model of the European novel.

The neorrealist novel, after all. evolves out of the realist one. But instead of simply portraying the

bourgeoisie's point of view, it places the hegemonic ideology against those of the remaining segments of

society to challenge and deconstruct it. Therefore, in an initial phase, as one can observe. Pepetela (whose

novels will be discussed in more detail in the second part of this chapter) appropriates the tools of the

‘"master" - the novelistic genre handed down to him by his predecessors - but only to subvert it. to cannibalize it. He uses the European novel, makes his portrayal of the European cathedral, and then questions its socio-political and racial ideology, its capitalist base, and its strategies of domination and power by exposing the flaws of its discourse and its civilizational model.

At the same time as he exposes the European myth of modernization brought forth by the

Enlightenment, he also raises questions that deal directly with their own idea of what the African nation is going to look like. He points to eventual problems they might face as they build their nation due to internal conflicts of interest. In other words, what Pepetela and other writers felt the need to do in their novels was to generate a discussion on how thei nation should be built, on what pillars to erect their autochtonous cathedral.

A closer examination of Pepetela’s novels will demonstrate that he does believe in the promotion of an ideal, of a foundation discourse that could appeal to the population as a whole. Like in Latin America, in Angola the various communities of people would also need a myth or dream to hold on to and to push them forward, in the direction of an ideal. A people without an ideal is a people without hope, without history. Therefore, in all of Pepetela's novels, one sees the author’s preoccupation with the re-creation of a

133 national ideal. In some of them he problematizes the inherited European model and the models Lusophone

Africans had held as their own. but which had been destroyed as the Portuguese arrived. Luegi will show how the tribal communities were organized before colonialism, for example. Other novels will show how, after centuries of oppression, native Africans have been made destitute of their traditional values, customs, and beliefs, their own mythological reservoirs and their means of communication. In these narratives he demonstrates that the problem of tribal and regional differences - which was overemphasized during the colonial period - needs to be confronted and worked out if a truly free, democratic, and modem nation is to be established.

The fact that Pepetela invariably brings up the need for myths is clear, but whether these mythical ideals actually will come true as envisioned does not seem as important as the fact that the new post-

Independence novels, implicitly or explicitly, will rely on “a Utopian thrust, whether it is directed backward to some imaginary past golden age or oriented toward some future golden age” (Booker 95). In other words, the first post-Independence novels will rely on the formation of a national grand narrative myth, an ideal reference that may return to the people their pride, their sense of identity, and their faith in the future. Therefore, interestingly, Pepetela s novels, as the concrete formalization of this national ideal, are, in his first phase, invariably structured around a certain organizational model, and certain essentialist truths that are emblematic of what the nation needed to do. The nation, like the novel, it was hoped, would have be fully imagined as utopia, by means of an accommodation of traditional and Western values, as in the novel Mayombe {\9%Q), where the question between nationalism and tribalism in Angola is played out; and in the novel Z,«eg/ (1990), where the ancient myth of Luegi - an ancient African queen and her empire

- is reinterpreted for the present day situation in Angola; or utopia would be a failure, as portrayed in one of

Pepetela’s most recent novel entitled A Geraçào da Utopia (1992).

134 4.2 The neorrealist novel in Lusophone Africa - A foundational discourse;

Artur Mauricio Pestana dos Santos

Like Manuel Scorza in Peru. Artur Mauricio dos Santos, or Pepetela. has played an active political role in his country, not only as a guerrilla Fighter and intellectual mentor in the Angolan Liberation

Movement or as a founding member of the Centro de Estudos Angolanos,- but also as a holder of several posts at the governmental level — as the Vice Minister of Education, for instance — after Angola won its independence in 1975. His political and literary involvement at both the pre-Independence and at the post-

Independence stages of Angola’s liberation has earned him increasing national and international recognition. However, a wider recognition and a more systematic critique of his literary work has been hindered by his use of Portuguese as his literary language, and by the relative difficulties of publication due to political and economic hardships in present Angola. Most of his books are therefore published either in

Portugal or in Brazil.’ Even so, in addition to his contribution in creating guerrilla literacy manuals and other didactic materials, his literary production, so far, includes the writing of some plays and novellas as well as six novels that contribute to the foundation of a national discourse, or the building of a perfect

Modem Cathedral, to keep using the metaphor proposed in Chapter 1. This is, in fact, what the epigraph opening this chapter seems to insinuate.

With the exception of one of his most recent novels.A Geraçào da Utopia (1992). in which

Pepetela seems to convey a loss of faith in the accomplishments of the perfect cathedral, of the ideal nation.

■ As a member of this center. Pepetela was placed in a committee in charge of re-writing Angola’s history. This is where he learned about many of the myths, the folklore, and traditions that date back to the pre-colonial era. and with which he will inform his novels.

^ As a curiosity, it might be worth registering here the following event. In 1996. when a colleague of mine at the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - Unisinos, went to Portugal for the summer, 1 asked him to buy me Pepetela’s most recently released book O desejo de Kianda. For some odd reason, my colleague was not able to find it in any of the largest and the most popular bookstores, where the clerks seemed to react very negatively when asked if they carried any books by Pepetela. It seemed that Pepetela, for his ideas, was considered somewhat subversive to the general Portuguese public. The end of this story

135 o Câo e os Caluandas (1985) and his latest O Desejo de Kianda (1995), the other novels, such as iV/ûrv’Offiôe (written in 1971, but not published until 1980), KaAa ( 1984) and (1990), are thematically concerned with the forging of a concept of a collective national identity, the quest of a new myth or a utopia and, therefore, reenact most of the neorrealist novelistic characteristics/ Because these novels place emphasis on national reconstruction as idealized even before independence, that is, during the nationalist liberation struggles or as the nation-building projects' are beginning to be implemented within the post colonial conte.xt, these novels attempt to deconstruct the flaws of the Western ideal and the western metanarrative mode inherited during the vast period of colonization.

But even if in many ways the literary and political career of Artur Mauricio Pestana dos Santos resembles that of Manuel Scorza, and their commitment to propose a national ideal more befitting of their specific historical and national contexts also coincides, the starting point of their "mission" differs quite substantially. Scorza’s writings, for one, are not concerned with a foundational fiction. He can lean on an existent tradition of post-independence metanarratives, or foundational fictions (as was demonstrated in

Chapter Two), that spans approximately a century and a half. That part of the process had long been achieved by the time Scorza began to write, and it was achieved through the writing of romance novels which went "hand in hand with patriotic history in Latin America [where] the books fueled a desire for domestic happiness that runs over into dreams of national prosperity; and nation-building projects invested private passions with public purpose" (Sommers 7).

is that my colleague finally found a copy of the mentioned book in a small and almost unknown bookstore in Lisbon.

■' The already-mentioned interview with Pepetela is entitled “Nos procuramos a utopia,” which reiterates the contention that this ideal is nourished but also insinuates that up to the present it has not yet been acomplished,

’ Nation-building projects are used in this study according to Sommer s definition, in which writers "were encouraged both by the need to fill in a history that would help to establish the legitimacy of the emerging nation and by the opportunity to direct that history toward a future ideal" (7).

136 Precisely because the foundation of the Latin American discourse had already been laid and sedimented, Scorza was able to take an à posteriori discursive perspective in his novels and direct his criticism to those socio-historical and ideological issues which have not been handled appropriately during the hundred years or more after Latin American nations became independent, thus creating a narrative which would address this frustration o f having realized that romance sentimental had failed in its purpose of forming the mentality of the new independent nation. This frustration which Scorza had to face and combat was referred to, in Chapter Two, as "La Caida de lo Sagrado," for the envisioned dreams had fallen through, the nationalist and patriotic discourses of post-Independence Latin America had not been accomplished. That is why Scorza aims his criticisms at the Peruvian government, which allowed transnational corporations to settle in Peru and take over indigenous territory, using up natural resources and raw materials and encroaching the indigenous populations at the bottom of society. Since all of what was sacred - the utopian ideals - had fallen, Scorza’s novels proposed a heterodox form of Marxism as an optimal form of country management that supposedly could encompass and take care of the needs of the campesinos who had been alienated and marginalized in neo-colonial discourse practices unforeseen and not dealt with by the foundational discourse of erotic-patriotics.

The conjunction of the patriotic and erotic discourses that lay at the basis of the foundational fiction in Latin America certainly did not form the base on which the African foundational narratives were built. Even though the narrative of an Angolan nation and history is only in the making, and was still in its embryonic stage when Pepetela engaged in the process, he relies on completely different literary referential, which are not solely foundational discourses. Angola has had a few but no less meaningful examples of resistance and of political and literary activism prior to the second half of this century such as

Pepetela's predecessor, the realist writer Castro Soromenho, as was already discussed, and his contemporaries José Luandino Vieria and Uanhenga Xitu, to mention only a few. The fact is that Pepetela's generation engages in the formation o f a national literature a century later than Latin Americans, and it can

137 therefore draw on already existent realist and neorrealist discourses which include not only his forerunners in Angola and Lusophone Africa, but also Portuguese Neorrealism and Brazilian Regionalism."

The trajectory of the Lusophone-African narrative does not include a literary phase of an

Enlightenment foundational discourse as profound as that in Latin America. This implies that there is no

“fall from the sacred” in Lusophone African literature. The foundational discourse in Angola is neorrealist from its start: it practically skips the idealization phase observable in the evolution of the Latin American novel, poetry being the exception, inasmuch as it did have aphase of idealization. The foundational discourse will not rely on the romance sentimental, which will attempt to unify people through a totalizing myth, but will depart directly from the premise and the conscience that the post-Independence reality is dichotomized and fragmented. Thus, it is important to call attention to the fact that although foundational,

Pepetela’s narratives focus, as Reisman suggests, on the transformational or transitional aspects of

Angolan society with faith in the reconciliation of oppositions, unlike Scorza in cycle "La Guerra

Silenciosa.” Scorza overtly places the dominant ideology against the ideology of the oppressed. As

Reisman puts it, these transformations incorporate "the questioning of past and future, individual and collective, theory and practice, or colonial history and the national movement” (152) in what Reisman has called a “double movement” between negating the past and delineating a collective national identity by means of textual innovations and a convergence of various discursive modes (historical, realistic, allegorical, mythical, and didactic) that "move beyond the contradictions of acculturation to propose a type o f collective narrative form” ( 152).

Therefore, Pepetela's literary activity "takes place within the interrelated process of nation- building and cultural redefinition that followed five hundred years of Portuguese political and cultural

" Trigo mentions the importance of a triangular comparatist study that examines more closely the similarities between the literature in Portugal, Brazil, and Lusophone Africa. Among the Brazilians, however, who have partially influenced Pepetela and others in Africa, he mentions Jorge Amado, Drummond de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos, Jorge de Lima, Cruz e Souza, and Guimarües Rosa, among others.

138 hegemony” (Reisman I). In other words, while in Manuel Scorza's context the groundwork for a solid and specific socio-historical and literary critique had already been laid, in Pepetela's context, it is still

imperative to undergo what Salvato Trigo contends as one of the primary tasks of a foundational fiction:

“nenhum povo consegue saber exactamente onde vai. ou deve ir. sem que descubra. primeiro. donde vem.

isto é. quais sâo as suas raizes ' (36).

Salvato Trigo contends that the post-Independence generation in Lusophone Africa recognizes the urgency of engaging in a literary process similar to that Latin American writers developed in their neorrealist phase, in order to enable African peoples to also transform theirconsciencia vencida into a consciencia historica. Indeed, for a people to uncover, rediscover, and recover its roots, to become refamiliarized with its past stories, myths, and beliefs, it is imperative for writers to undertake the task of rewriting history because history, as it has always been conceived, "attempts to systematize the world through ethnocultural hierarchy and chronological progression" so as to "keep the unintelligible realm of historical diversity at bay” (Gikandi 7). Pepetela understands this manipulative power of history and understands how much more relevant the task of rewriting Angola's history becomes if the aim is to forge a national identity and mold a future nation not on a unilateral account that considers only the European interest and ideological discursive practices, but one that will focus on national identity in their own terms.

History as a discursive practice is a determinant factor in evaluating whether the nation-building myths really take shape and help the envisioned nation to come true. But just as the concept of nation, the concept of history is an idealization, an imaginary construct; it is a discursive practice which reflects and registers events of a specific social and political context, at the same time as it participates in the representation and constitution of this same reality. In other words, history reflects upon but also helps to shape a given reality. Pepetela expresses his preoccupation with history in an interview for the Lisbon newspaperExpresso: “Dou-lhe muita importância [aos factos historicos], ate porque a colonizaçào acabou por marcar a visâo que se tem de Africa, e eu penso que uma das nossas preocupaçôes fundamentais deve

139 ser a reescrita da nossa Historia, com uma visâo de dentro. a visâo das popuiaçôes que para ela contribuiram. É praticamente so a partir da independéncia que tat é possivel"(85-R).

This, exactly, is the tasic Pepetela undertalces in the writing ofYuka and Liiegi. He departs from the oppositions between Western and non-Westem sets of values and ideals in a rather deconstructive practice of both Western socio-political paradigms and the Western narrative modes. And he does so not without problematizing the very concept of (re)writing history itself. In Yaka. for instance, he provides a retrospective look at Angola's colonial history from the point of view of its insiders, the Portuguese colonists vis à vis the natives, in a narrative mode that enables both the voice of a colonist and of a statue of

African origin - called Yaka - to take turns in the narration to thus avoid a unilateral account of historical events. One realizes that there is an evolution between his account and that of Soromenho. for Pepetela recounts not only the story of the colonists but also that of the natives, one not excluding the other, but actually bringing both antagonistic discourses together at the end. to form a collective narrative, as

Reisman contended.

In Lueji Pepetela goes even further, moving one more step forward in the direction of the postmodern narrative in the sense that he raises questions about the supposed historical "rigor" and about fictional and textual creation, especially when the concern is to write and recover the past of a mainly oral tradition civilization. In this novel. Lu - the main character, who is a ballet dancer investigating the myth of Lueji (the myth of a queen that saves the Lunda empire) to adapt it for a choreography for the National

Theater of Angola - has difficulties in reconciling the varied versions of this particular myth found in books and those of the oral tradition, some of them narrated by her grandmother:

Lu começou imediatamente a falar. com ânsia incontrolâvel. sabria[sic] toda e mais as suas inquietaçôes e dûvidas. citando o que sabia de Lueji e Tchinguri e Chinyama. por ter lido nos livros de Vansina. Henrique de Carvalho. Bastin. Redinha. Calder Miller e outros. versôes contraditôrias todas elas e mais as versôes que imaginava poderem existir. e lia os apontamentos para citar os autores e também as invençôes delà [...] pois faziam as ligaçôes lôgicas e davam vida aos factos enterrados no esquecimento do tempo, talvez incômodos para os narradores de tradiçâo oral e por isso apagados da Histôria. (212)

140 After desperately trying to reconstitute the meaning of these many versions. Lu decides to consult a historian, who only confirms the problematic nature of historiography, in the following terms:

E certo que hâ versôes contraditôrias. Como tudo na tradiçâo oral. Cada grupo déforma uma versâo em ftmçào de seus interesses mais ou menos imediatos, isto é, a versâo tradicional é sempre ideolôgica, justifica ou o poder que se tem ou o poder que se quer obter. Ou porquè de se ter perdido o poder. Depurar a versâo da ideologia que nela esta présente, eis o trabalho da ciéncia histôrica. (376)

Compared to Lueji. where Pepetela discusses the history-making process at the theoretico- conceptual level, in Yaka. written some time before, he only offers a parallel and counterdiscursive historical version of colonial events, without problematizing the very concept of historiography. In Yaka

Pepetela "cleanses," as Lu s historian friends would say in Luegi. the ideology behind the historical accounts and fills the gaps left out by the official metanarrative of the colonial period. What Pepetela does in Yaka is similar to the process described by Hayden White in History as Literary .Artifact, in which White conveys that the process of history-making is a question of creation, of selection, of recompilation of data that is always biased, never completely impartial, and, therefore, heteroglossic in perspective.

In Yaka. Pepetela creates a dialogic historical perspective, permitting the voice of both sides to speak, in separated plots that will eventually intermingle. Pepetela shows, inYaka. what the Portuguese program for Angola's colonization was like and reveals how, relentlessly, the seeds of resistance and the articulation of a nationalist discourse start to germinate out of the arid soil of colonization. He narrates the history of Angola from two opposing points of view: from the Portuguese colonists' perspective and from the native Africans, for both the Portuguese colonists and the natives had been forgotten by the Portuguese

Crown when it turned its attention to the Brazilian colony, which appeared to be much more promising and economically profitable.'

’ It is worth calling attention to the fact that the colonial history in Latin America and in Lusophone Africa vary substantially. In Latin America, the vice-royalties set the base for the colonization of the nations. The colonizing process in L.A. was systematic whereas in Angola and Mozambique, the colonization process was not systematic and both the Portuguese colonists and the native Africans were left

141 In the main plot, and with a relatively linear chronology, this novel recounts the story of five generations of the Semedo family and Yaka, the statue which accompanied the protagonist Alexandre

Semedo. In a subplot, Pepetela recounts the plight of the Vilonda family of Cuvale descent, who are pushed out of their land and lose their cattle due to the Portuguese expansionist program. The first plot allegorizes the history of Angola from the time of the first Portuguese settlements to the dawn of the liberation movement (the last generation culminates with the MPLA guerrilla — Movimento de Libertaçâo da Angola

— around the 1960s and 70s), whereas the second plot allegorizes the passage of the native Africans and some whites, from a conciencia vencida, to conciencia mitica to a conciencia histôrica. ]\isx. as in the novels by Scorza, where the population is shown to also need to go through this threefold process in order to participate actively in the nation's political process (theconciencia mitica. however, will not be present in all o f Pepetela’s novels).

At the historical level, the reader learns about the inside view of Angola's history, through the development of each generation of the Semedos. The first generation is personified by Oscar Semedo, who was deported to Angola in 1880 either on political or criminal charges. One never learns which one of the versions is really true, but one is left with the impression that the whites who came to populate the colonies, in the metropolis's effort to "civilize" the territory, paradoxically, were the no-goods. After finishing his penal sentence, without any money to be able to return to Portugal, Oscar ends up staying in Angola, which he is unable to accept as his new patria, as his father/motherland. Refusing to accept this fact and reality, he maintains the dream of eventually returning to Portugal, despite Portugal’s indifference in relation to the desolate situation of the colonists and the native communities in Angola, When Oscar finally realizes that his return to Portugal is an illusion, he begins to envision it as a possibility for his son Alexandre.

Alexandre, representative of the second generation, is, however, portrayed as a totally alienated individual, who is distant from the Portuguese referent at the same time as he is unwilling to identify with to deal with the problems of their confrontation and amicable surviving and co-existing, without

142 the African reality. His generation, characterized by its total alienation and lack of political and ideological

perspective, is ultimately responsible for the emergence of a reactionary and conservative third generation,

which, willing to rupture with the cycle of alienation, abandonment, and fatalism, decides to overtly embrace the old ideals of Portuguese expansionism and make the colony prosper at the cost o f the exploitation of Angola’s native population. Pepetela shows that, even though from the second generation of settlers onward they could all be considered Africans, the African-born colonists would rather be identified as "brancos de segunda" than be called Africans or Angolans. Their conservatism can be attested by the creation of an association called "Grêmio Lusitano, " where politics, economics, and the relations between the Crown and the colony, and the Crown and its affairs with the British Empire, were discussed. Always, of course, in defense of white supremacy in the colony and the colony's liberation from the Portuguese

Empire.

The fourth generation is presented as aloof, caring neither for their parents' expansionist discourse nor for Africa's independence. Even though some of the characters are well-read and intellectually informed on Marxist ideology and MPLA's envisionment of Socialism as a viable political alternative for the "country-to-be," they do not engage actively in any of the emerging political parties. In fact, one of

Alexandre's granddaughters, who is politically aware of the situation and would therefore have the potential to become an active participant in the liberation movement, prefers to become a nun instead.

Paradoxically, the lack of political interest together with an exacerbated economical interest on the part of the local élite and the degeneration of the other social and racial layers lead to the posterior and urgent articulation and mobilization of the people in a liberation front.

Thus, the fifth generation, represented by Joel, the greatgrandson of Alexandre Semedo. is the generation that heads the struggle for the Independence of Angola. Joel understands that the time has come to choose sides, to embrace an ideology: "hâ um momento na vida em que se tem de escolher o seu proprio

interference from the Portuguese Crown.

143 caminho. nào é avô? E agora é mais précise. É precise esceiher e seu pais" (292). While these who believe

in the natien-building process and in a better future for Angela stay, most of the members of the third and

fourth generation, together with others of the white local élite, flee to South Africa when they feel

threatened by the liberation movement and feel that the inevitable war of Independence will finally errupt.

As Reisman aptly contends. "Yaka s historical discursive mode evokes a model of colonial

literature [...] similar to Uanhenga Xitu's Os Sobrevtventes da Mdquina Colonial Depoem [which]

simultaneouly works towards a demystification of colonial ideology [...] through the parallel history of

African resistance and also through the anti-heroic portrayal of the Semedo family" (183). Thus, in the

story that runs parallel to the anti-heroic portrayal of the colonist family, the reader learns about the history

of the Vilondas. Told mainly by Yaka. the statue, but also by Alexandre Semedo. this subplot story

portrays the slow estrangement of the natives from their own traditions and their own cultural universe.

This parallel story is therefore very important, because it creates an opportunity to reexamine the damage

and the consequences of colonization on the economic but also socio-cultural universe of the natives and

shows how devastating the loss of such traditions was as a potentially unifying force among the isolated

ethnic communities which would be able to more effectively fight against their common enemy if they had a better understanding of this historical momentum. Even though in Yaka Pepetela wanted to write, as

Reismann contends, "um romance sobre o colonialismo visto pelos proprios colonos para que a nova geraçâo compreendesse o colonialismo" ( 179). writing also about the natives, and from their point of view,

broadened the scope of perspective by pointing out the variety of challenges and problems to be faced in the post-Independence period of reconstruction.

The subplot that capitalizes on the "natives' side" of Angola's colonial history is protagonized by the Vilonda family. The Vilonda family is portrayed as a little sign of resistance, an almost inaudible voice that defeats the silence of the majority of the native communities. Vilonda. the elderly man of the Vilonda

family, is characterized as a wise and hopeful man who puts aside his fears and doubts to make some

144 daring decisions in order to save his family. He understands that at the same time that some of his native traditions have to be kept and rekindled within the small borders of his onganda. others have to be challenged and abandoned in the name of survival. This subplot, in other words, allows Pepetela to call attention to the fact that some of the modem ideas brought with colonialism have to be adopted, whereas not all of the traditional lore has to be recovered and maintained.

Pepetela insinuates, here, that even though this task is arduous and ambiguous, it is necessary to learn to make choices no matter how painful they are. As the Vilonda family goes in search of new lands, since that of their ancestors' was taken by the Portuguese, Vilonda is forced to transgress their own tradition. His relatives, who are against his daring decision, warn him; "vais arranjar problemas" (132). But he does not seem to have alternatives. He is caught in an impasse: he either has to respect tradition and abandon the idea of going in search of other lands, and in consequence lead his family to starvation; or he will have to be courageous enough to break with the spell of ancestral tradition in order to save his loved ones.

Todos os anos a andar, andar, à procura de capim verde? Bibala, Capangombre, Camucuio. Caitou, todos esses sitios a familia percorreu, ora para a (rente, ora para trâs, transmutando os bois. Casa aqui, casa là, curral aqui, curral acolâ. Guerra também, e roubos também. Quebraste a tradiçâo, um dia vais pagar. Ouebrei a tradiçâo? Mudei de sitio. deixei de cavar cacimbas nos le it os secos dos rios. procure i âgtta permanente. Tradiçâo? Viver nos rochedos secos. ver os bois secar e morrer? Que tradiçâo manda os homens morrer de fome? Rezo na mesma para os antepassados, mato os mesmos bois na sua homenagem, sô que piso terras mais no norte. (132, emphasis added)

While he is able to understand that he needs to defy the tradition and opt for the survival of his family, Vilonda is also conscious of the fact that he needs to keep some of these traditions alive. As

Vilonda s plight is retold, Pepetela recovers many of the traditions that were completely ignored by the official historical accounts. The reader is introduced to a welter of traditions, customs of the Cuvale people that would otherwise never become known to an outsider. As Pepetela recreates these stories within the main narrative — such as the initiation rites of adolescent boys, mating rituals, the organization of an onganda, how the houses are built, who inhabits each house, where the fireground for the cooking and the

145 elao, the altar for sacrifices, are located — the reader also learns about the slow transformation of some of

these traditions due to déculturation and acculturation of other cultural traditions since the program of the

colonization program was established.

When the author describes the distribution of tasks, for instance, one leams that women cultivate

the lands, each of the wives has her own plot, and grows her own food. One leams that these women, as

time went by. implemented new techniques that were either learned from the contact with other tribes or

with the Portuguese. The women had heard, for instance, that cow manure helps the crops. This is new

knowledge and Vilonda. a fair, honest, and faithful man. ponders about the old and the new in thoughts and experience, posing old beliefs in tradition and customs against more modem knowledge brought from

outside, before making judgement. Through an almost didactic discursive mode. Pepetela brings to the fore the discussion on the effects of colonization, on having to leam to deal with the ambiguity of the dual

paradigm established with the presence of Portuguese in the African territory. He reinforces the necessity of not Just presenting binarisms but teaming how to decide which ones to oppose and deconstmct. and which ones to canibilize. that is. which ones to appropriate for their own good. In other words, learning to break with tradition, implementing agricultural techniques which have never been heard of before, are part of this process of tuning up with Modemity mentioned by Pires Laranjeira. in which nation-building narratives take on the task of teaching people to “weed out” colonial practices that are counterproductive in order to keep those which will enhance the process of modemization and development.

When Pepetela digresses into descriptions of life in the traditionalonganda. he also recenters and revalorizes the oral traditions which have been repressed during the colonizing practices. As the author

introduces the reader to the typical social stmcture of an onganda and how the relations among the different wives and their respective children are organized in relation to the father, he underscores the

importance of orality as a means through which history is construed and knowledge passed on from generation to generation: "À frente de cada uma das cubatas das mulheres hà uma fogueira que serve de

146 cozinha. Nessas fogueiras à noite conversam. cantam, e Vilonda conta as estorias do povo aos mais jovens. as estorias dos ciâs, as estorias do oma-kisi. os monstros. e poe provérbios e adivinhas" (135). But since this rich native cultural universe is only barely surviving in some isolated areas of Angola, it cannot work as a unifying force that could bring together the marginalized and estranged ethnic communities that so urgently need to fight against the unjust forms of colonial domination. In the novel May ombe Pepetela becomes very explicit and criticizes the fact that the natives, due to tribalism and isolation, have hindered their process of liberation and formation of an independent and more ideal nation-state.

But the welter of beliefs and traditions that resurface in Yaka seem to be motivated by yet another reason, not just the placing of the native cultural imaginary against the Western imaginary by means of new technical literary devices that approach Magic Realism. He seems to be willing to show that these ancient traditions serve as paradigm for their interpretation of reality and forms the base of their cultural subjectivity. In fact, there is one account that seems to be magical or supernatural, which is easily interpreted and decoded within the framework of cultural, cosmologie, and ritual set of referentials of the

Vilonda community and, therefore, strongly contrasts with the European and the colonists' iVeltanschauiing.

One day, wandering around in his estate, Vilonda sees one of his sacred cows, the namulilo. acting very strangely as if agitated for some unknown reason. He realizes also that a bird that is unfamiliar to the region is flying low over the ridge. These two signs seem to be indicating that something unusual and even negative is about to occur. The namulilo and the bird, from the point of view of the Cuvales, are bad omens, signs of danger. As it turns out, the bird and namulilo are actually announcing the death of

Vilonda s son. Vilonda s son, Tyenda, was on his way home from a trip to visit his relatives — a custom youngsters follow before getting married. Already within the boarders of their land Tyenda accidentally crosses the path of characters from the main plot, Alexandre Semedo s son Aqui les and his friends, who had entered that territory on a hunting trip as pretext to "to see a mucubal" (derogatory term used by white

147 Angolans to refer to the native Africans from the interior). Well. Tyenda is attacked and killed, but Vilonda. having paid attention to the signs of the cow and the bird, had just gone up the ridge from where he saw the whole event taking place. Vilonda. seeing that his son was being attacked, tries to protect him by

"launching" an arrow that ends up killing Aquiles. Tyenda s attacker. The supernatural aspect of this event is that right at the time this incident was about to occur. Vilonda was paying attention to the signs of the strange bird and was having this vision of a jaguar chasing one of Vilonda s calves and killing it. As if in a dream, this vision was a simultaneous recreation of what was happening between Tyenda and Aquiles. a fatal struggle: the white jaguar — the colonist Aquiles — attacking the the calf — the native Tyenda.

It is important to stress that the Real Maravilloso within the context of this novel is not simply functioning as a way of "familiarizing" the "unfamiliar." The Real Maravilloso here is functioning as in

Scorza's novels, that is. as a postmodern technique of decentering Western values. Western ideologies and modus operandi, and placing the marginalized episteme at the center of the discourse, no matter how implausible it may seem. In Scorza’s novel it was the invisible Garabombo helping organize a silent war against the landlords of the Cerro de Pasco Co.. and here it is the Cuvale episteme. in the form of traditions and beliefs, helping Vilonda understand the present historical situation. What Pepetela manages to bring to the center of attention with this incident is the revalorization of the African worldview, for without it.

Vilonda would not have been able to interpret and. consequently, interfere in it to save his son’s life. From a European perspective, which had always undermined the cosmology, myths and beliefs as primitive, barbaric, and therefore non-scientific and not modem, this way of understanding reality is, in fact, magic and fantastic.

Another important point that can be derived from this incident between the Vilonda boy and

Aquiles. which ended up in a major massacre of Vilonda s onganda is directly connected to the discussion of the colonial system of justice. When Aquiles's friends return to the town carrying Aquiles s dead body, they justify his death telling a version of the story that is completely different from the one told by the

148 narrator; "— Fomos sô caçar. Ac aproximar-nos da onganda. eles atacaram de repente. Eram muitos. talvez

uns vinte, Disparamos. Um deles tombou. Depots a azagaia acertou no Aquiles. que la à frente. Fizemos

fogo e conseguimos recuar. Nào nos perseguiram. talvez porque nào tinham armas de fogo. Sô dispararam

fléchas e zagaias, nào é. malta?"(174). Aquiles's brother-in-law Bartolomeu decides to avenge the family

by stealing Vilonda s cattle and attacking the onganda with the local army: "O exército nào vai fazer nada?

É preciso vingar a morte do meu cunhado. Esses selvagens devem ser castigados" ( 174).

With this whole incident. Pepetela criticizes institutionalized justice. He shows that during

colonial times Justice was in the hand of whites, no matter who was right or wrong. Bartolomeu 's search

for power and thirst for revenge that caused the massacre was unjustifiable but motivated, as one leams. by

economic interests. 'The cattle they stole as they attacked the onganda was divided proportionately between

him and the army officer that commanded the attack. The money from the sale of the cattle was in turn

used to augment Semedo s estate.

The reawakening of lost and buried traditions and myths in Yaka does not only work at the

historical level, as we have seen so far. It also has repercussions at the mythico-narrational level. Yaka. the

statue Alexandre inherits from his father Oscar, observes everything with her intriguing marbled eyes. Eyes

that disturb Alexandre. Eyes that keep a watch, that attempt to communicate and can therefore play an

important role inasmuch as the narration is concerned. Perhaps willing to underscore how important it is for

a culture that has lost its myths to be able to recover them; and perhaps willing to oppose a monolithic

representation of reality, especially when one is dealing with a mutifaceted and multicultural society.

Pepetela explores a double narration. By so doing, he avoids the sole description of a third person omniscient observer, who mirrors an objective reality (as was usually the case in the realist novel) and shifts, as Reisman contends, "from a relatively standard Portuguese" narration to a discourse that

"incorporates various registers of Portuguese" and "uses words from Bantu language spoken in Angola"

( 187) that further challenge the mono logic representation of a relegated people.

149 In Yaka. Pepetela presents the story of the five generations of the Semedo family through the intertwined voices of Alexandre Semedo and Yaka. Between the voices of Yaka and Alexandre. Pepetela establishes a dialogic relationship. The statue serves as his interlocutor, but also as Alexandre s devil's advocate. Even though she does not overtly speak to him. only to the reader, her eyes bother Alexandre.

The way she stares at him makes him feel uncomfortable and consequently influences his perception of what is taking place. On occasion of a conversation between .Alexandre and his greatgrandson. Alexandre confesses to Joel that he has always had a troublesome relation with Yaka:

Involuniariamente. Alexandre Semedo virou a cabeça e contemplou a estatua. Joel sorri. - Inutil fintar. avô. Sei que ouve tudo. Os olhos do velho se iluminaram. Um sorriso apareceu nos labios. como quando nalgumas conversas no salào. - Gostas dela? — perguntou. - Sim — diz Joel. — Parece que fala. - E fala mesmo. Eu é que nào a compreendo. É yaka, dum povo do Norte de Angola, quase fronteira corn o Congo Belga... - Jâ nào é belga, avô — corrige Joel. - Sei — disse o velho. — Mudam os nomes e nôs nunca nos habituamos aos novos nomes... Como descobriste que ouvia tudo? Pelos olhos. (289)

Undoubtedly, there is an exchange taking place between Yaka and Alexandre. And in the middle of the novel there is an insinuation that the novel was based on notes Alexandre had taken, meant as a memoir to be read only by family members, which, however, assumed larger proportions and eventually turned into the novel Yaka. This is how Alexandre Semedo collected the data that was used for the narrative:

começou a escrever as suas memôrias. Em forma de conversas para a estatua yaka.... Durante quatro anos escreveu regularmente. mas muito lentamente, na média de duas frases por dia. Cada palavra puxava uma recordaçüo, uma idéia, e se perdia nos meandros da memôria. Depois vinha uma idéia e esta levava-o a fiInsofar sobre coisas gérais e sentia a necessidade de conhecer melhor os detalhes dum fato passado fora do seu conhecimento direto ou um costume dos povos da regiâo. O que nasceu como uma biografia modesta, para consumo exclusivo da familia, começou a ganhar um ambito mais geral, que o ultrapassava. (210)

While writing his memories, Alexandre tries to establish conversations with Yaka. An almost useless attempt since he is unable to understand her ways of communicating: "Toda vida provoquei conversa com

150 ela; quando miùdo era a minha confidente, depois rareei mais, convencido que nâo se abria, até que volte! a insistir com ela. Muda. sempre muda, fala corn seus olhos de berlinde. Sinto cada vez mais que ela me fala.

Mas nâo entendo" (22) This attempt at dialogizing Alexandre s utterances with those of the statue undoubtedly mark Pepetela's intention to incorporate other voices, narrative styles and ideologemes into the discourse of the novel, into the rewriting of Angolan history, in a heteroglossic interaction that produces. according to Mikhail Bahktin. the following effect;

The interaction, this dialogic tension between two languages and two belief systems, permits authorial intentions to be realized in such a way that we can acutely sense their presence at every point in the work. The author is not to be found in the language of the narrator, nor in the normal literary language to which the story opposes itself (although a story may be closer to a given language) — but rather, the author utilizes now one language, now another, in order to avoid giving himself up wholly to either of them: he makes use of this verbal give-and-take, this dialogue of languages at every point in his work, in order that he himself might remain as it were neutral with regard to language, a third party in the quarrel between two people (although he might be a biased third party). (314)

As can be observed, this is an intentional way of delegitim izing the metanarrative account and the single author(itative) voice of the narrator. Alexandre s single narration is oftentimes interrupted by

Yaka's, whose goal is to interfere in the account and interpretation of events. When the narrative shifts from Alexandre's first person voice to the third person, it is Yaka. who witnesses everything, that speaks.

She only rarely speaks in the first person singular, but frequently she incorporates the speech of others into the narration without marking the change from indirect into direct speech in what resembles the technique of stream of consciousness, a tradition inaugurated mainly by British high modernist exponents such as

James Joyce, Gertrud Stein, and Virginia Woolf, in an uninterrupted flow of unpunctuated thoughts. Even when Alexandre speaks, there is hardly ever an indication of narrator change. The effect Pepetela accomplishes through this heteroglossic narrative mode also resembles the "irrealist" novels which Goic talks about when referring to the generation that polemicizes the neorrealist and prefers the irrealist and marvelous real representations of reality in Latin America:

Estamos ante un narrador basico omnisciente que no enuncia valores ni consideraciones sobre lo que acontece, los personajes, el mundo o la narracion, ni se enfrenta citicamente ni descontadizo a

151 la realidad. Como ocurre con el narrador contemporâneo. en general [Goic probably refers to the postmodern and boom literature], hallamos aqui la renûncia de narrador a interpretar el mundo. a ofrecer soluciones a las incertidumbres o violencias at sentido natural de las cosas. (253, emphasis added)

(It is important to keep in mind the italicized part of this quote. It will also serve to substantiate our next

point)

The mythical level is also allegorized in the structure of the novel, which is divided into five parts, each one named after one part of a seemingly disconnected body: A boca ( 1890/1904, Os olhos (1917). O coraçâo ( 1940/41 ), O sexo (1961). .\s pemas ( 1975). Each of these parts is constituted of a varied number of chapters. But in the third chapter of part one, the reader gets the first indication that these are not only historical periods of Angola’s history, but also isolated parts of a body that needs to be reconnected:

"Esperava a chuva linica. talvez sem agua. que ia ligar a boca, aos olhos e as pemas e ao sexo, ainda isolados em desconfianços. Se cumpriria entào o augûrio lido nos intestinos do cabrito, que confundia ruido de chuva com mùsica estranha. nova, mas tâo nossa?” (14). Much later into the novel, the reader realizes that the parts might actually be those of Yaka, and that the statue stands for the myth of a nation, whose different ethnic tribes, different races, languages, and interests are still disconnected.

By the time the MPLA liberation struggle had been able to organize fronts in different parts of the territory and was about to win Angola's independence in 1975, the song of the liberation movement is heard loud and clear across the nation, allegorizing the reconnection, recreation of the fragmented body, thus showing that little instances of resistance as that of the Vilonda family are assuming larger proportions, and that perhaps someday, these forces might act together against the dominant powers, as the campesinos in Scorza's novels did when they began moving from a conciencia vencida, to a conciencia mitica, to a conciencia historica:

floresceu aquela miisica MPLA Weya, MPLA chegou, e mais as palavras que agora eram mùsica, Owifli oku soma, o Povo no poder, e aquela mùsica entrou nas casas baixas da Camunda, se infiltrou nos bananais do Cavaco, subiu com o rio para o interior, se separou em afluentes para o Dombe Grande, as Mundas, Caitou, e outro afluente para o Humabo e Bid pela Catumbela e outro pelo Lobito e o Pundo [...] e nas grutas ùmidas se dançava e nos platôs secos se dançava e

152 reconheci nela a cançâo da minha criaçâo [this is Yaka narrating], requebrando pelos morros de capim rasteiro a puberdade finalmente aicançada [...] sonho-certeza de tantes anos como profetizara pelos olhos transparentes. (248)

The parts of Angola’s body seem to have finally been connected, in unison, as had been prophesized by Yaka in the nota prévia, where the author speculates about Yaka s origin and symbolism.

Yaka, Mbayaka, jaga, imbangala? Foram uma mesma formaçào social(?), Naçào (?) — aos antropologos de esclarecer. Certo é que agitaram a jâ tremeluzente Historia de Angola, com suas incursôes ao Reino do Congo, na ultima das quais cercaram o rei numa ilha do grande rio e iam Ihe cortar a cabeça, quando os portugueses intervieram para salvar a coroada cabeça, ainda nâo vassala. Foi o principio do que se sabe. Na Matamba, deram força à legendâria Rainha Njinga (ou Nzinga). que empurrou o exército portugués até o mar. Talvez Njinga fosse yaka? [...] E o circulo yaka ficou fechado nesses séculos antigos. Criadores de chefias. assimiladores de culturas, formadores de exércitos Jovens de outras popuiaçôes que iam integrando na sua caminhada, parecem apenas uma idéia errante, cazumbi [espirito] antecipado da nacionalidade. (6)

In the beginning of the book, Pepetela poses the possibility that Yaka might symbolize this myth, this hope, but he poses the question in a riddle-like form, which suggests three things: the first one relates to the narrational aspect of the novel. As was mentioned earlier, Alexandre, the main narrator, had trouble

"figuring out" what Yaka was trying to convey from her point of observance. The dialogue between them was, to a certain extent. inefTective. for Alexandre could not produce meaning out of her eyes, which, like the riddle, always hides an answer, though never an apparent one. The second aspect relating to the riddle is the fact that the reader. Just like Alexandre, has to be able to make sense of the riddle in order to understand the suggestive metaphor that Yaka might be a mythical force pushing the native people toward the formation of young armies that will fight, as the legendary queen Njinga or Yaka had done. This took place also in Scorza's novel of the cycle, where, awakened by their myths, the campesinos learned the importance of articulating and organizing a massive revolt against the Cerro de Pasco Co.

The third aspect relates to the fact that the riddle might stand for the huge question mark, the huge doubt, the fear and anxiety of the people as they attempt to win their independence and wish to build a nation according to their own imaginary, their own cultural, social, political, and ideological perceptions.

153 "Is it going to work?" "Are we going to be able to unite the disparaging parts, get our independence, and

manage to reconstruct our nation after centuries of damage?" "Are we going to be able to build our own

cathedral?" "What is it going to look like?" These are all questions this riddle seems to generate and which

force the closure of the novel to be open-ended, just as is typical of postmodern narratives.

Looking at Angola's socio-economic situation from our midnineties' perspective, one knows that

many of the dreams envisioned for their independent future fell through and a lot of the dreams envisioned

were far from ideal. The unity of the parts was somewhat illusionary for until now, two decades after

Independence, civil wars keep hindering the process of unification, and the early nationalism of post

independence "gave way, silently and almost instantly, to neo-colonial complicity and corruption," as Karin

Barber contends (Priebe i.x). A possible answer to the riddle comes with Pepetela's novel A Geraçâo da

Utopia, in which many of the guerrilla fighters, whose role is so important in the liberation struggle (novel

Mayombe). sell out on their leftist or sometimes even anarchist ideologies on account of their personal

interests, or on the fact that they begin to abuse the power they have acquired at high-level positions within the government, thus opening way to corruption and opportunism. It is impossible, however, to derive one definite answer at this point, and therefore it is important to refer back to the italicized sentence of the quote on Goic: the narrator does not provide the reader with any definite truths, nor does he interpret reality or offer solutions. The undecidedness of reality is reflected in the narration, and the narration reflects it back. Just as the so-called postmodern narratives do.

Needless to say, the fact that Pepetela includes myths and construes Yaka s narrative in the form of a riddle is not just an act of placing the traditional African against the Western traditional to, thus, reinforce the dichotomy between Western and autochthonous ways of perceiving the world and calling attention to the necessity of finding ways of bridging the differences in order to create a collective national identity and discourse. It also reinforces the idea that recounting historical facts implies knowing the

154 multiplicity of versions this history entails, while emphasizing the necessity of dealing with the opposites,

the ambiguity and the irreversibility of the historical process.

Secondly, the riddle is a way of bringing to the fore, and into the written narrative, a typical,

complex, andmarvelous realist form of oral communication within African cultures not widely spread in

Western cultures. Joel, the greatgrandson. who chooses to fight in the war of independence with the MPLA.

seems to be able to penetrate this native universe, assimilating it. and. perhaps, finding a way of

interpreting what Yaka stood for; "A estatua représenta um colono. avô. Repare bem. É o que o escultor

pensava dos colonos. Ridicularizados. Veja o nariz. Burros e ambiciosos! "(294). As a matter of fact, in the

beginning of the novel, the reader is presented with a visual description of Yaka. according to Alexandre 's

narration: "Minha mâe sempre a achou horrivel com este olhos transparentes de berlinde e estas très listas

paralelas, branca. prêta e vermelha. Repara, tem quase um metro de altura e corpo de homem. mas a cara é

estranha, por vezes com aspecto humano. por vezes animal. O nariz batatudo parece de bébado e dâ um ar

trocista ao todo" (22).

Whether Yaka symbolizes the colonist, or a hybrid of the native and Portuguese culture — the

new mestizo population or thenovo homem angolano. or whether it represents a myth which can be envisioned according to everyone's own fancy, is not so important as the fact that it did produce meaning to Joel and finally to Alexandre, who now is able to understand that what he wrote in his memoir, and what he has shared with his greatgrandson "é o que ela me anda a dizer hâ oitenta anos e so agora entendo"

(294).

The effect Pepetela gets from this dialogical narrational technique is similar to that seen in

Scorza's novel, which is to capitalize on elements of the collective universe, that is. a shared culture, to shape the mythical consciousness and then move on to a historical consciousness. Pepetela resurfaces myths that were buried, lost, and/or forbidden during the period of colonization, and invests them with meaning for the present socio-cultural and historical situation. In the case of the colonist Alexandre, and his

no greatgrandson Joel, it assumes an even more important proportion, for it signifies that slowly the myths which previously could only have meant something for the native Africans, for whom such myths were a part of their daily subjectivity and imaginary, now begin to generate meaning to the white and mestizo population of Angola.

The process of cultural integration, of syncretism, has to be a two-way road: not only do the natives have to acculturate Western traditions, but also the Portuguese Angolans have to leam to assimilate and integrate African traditions if they ever want to share the same territory as the one and only nation.

Undoubtedly, Pepetela suggests that there is hope, that the cultural gaps between one and the other cultures are relentlessly being bridged. If not. at least this multiple representation ensures, from a postmodern point of view, that neither one is more important than the other, but that they are equally finding their space for representation. It might mean that the different parts of the body might eventually be reconnected and that the apparently dysfunctional parts are now finally beginning to work and may form a complete and sound body in the future. Allegorically, the ability of recreating the myth signifies that Angolans can once again rely on a myth - not one imposed by the foreign metropolis - but one in accordance with their own imaginary. The power coming from this faith helps them strengthen the movement towards liberation and ultimately change the course of history, as can be seen in Mayombe.

It might be interesting to call attention to three characters in Yaka. whose role is to reveal the complexity of racial and ideological tensions that have to be assimilated and more realistically understood before the dream of a collective national identity can be forged in the future nation. These include

Bartolomeu Espinha. Alexandre Semedo s son-in-law, who flees to South Africa with most members of the family; Joel, who stays to fight; and Chico, Alexandre 's mestizo grandson, who was bom out of an affair with a native African. Bartolomeu is an opportunist, who does not envision the dream of a nation-state in the ideal terms discussed hitherto. He only thinks of Angola as a the source for his own wealth, the building of his own empire; he functions somewhat like individuals and transnational corporations that choose to

156 settle in a country of the Third World because they are economically profitable as long as they can find plenty of raw materials and cheap labor out of which fortunes can be made. Bartolomeu does that. So much so, that by the time people have to make a choice and decide whether they are going to embrace the ideals of the prospective nation and fight, or whether they are going to flee, he decides to pack and go. His behavior is indeed similar to those of the élite in many countries who have opted for a socialist form of government as Cuba, for instance.

People like Bartolomeu do not share the interests of any political party, the collective desire of transforming the colonial grounds into a prosperous and independent nation. He justifies his decision to escape and his fears of staying in Angola, as follows: "Trata-se da nossa vida. Acho que sâo todos iguais e qualquer que seja o Movimento que fique no govemo vai-me lixar. Sem ter consideraçào os anos que trabalhei para esta terra, a abrir estradas, a organizar recenseamentos, a cobrar impostos etc. Tudo isso para o bem do Pais, ou nâo?” (Yaka 252).

This character incorporates all the features of those people Pepetela sees as adversaries and reactionary, and who will impede a new Angolan society to be formed: those who have always taken advantage of any situation for their own interest and who never got involved in any independization project. Bartolomeu knows that none of the political parties nor any of the resistance movements would spare him, since his only ideology was personal profit. In many instances of the narrative, the author demonstrates how Bartolomeu despises the native African population and the poor white colonists, economically exploiting both of them through the expulsion of natives from their land and/'or through the illicit acquisition of land, or by instigating intrigues among members of different communities so as to avoid their possible unification. Bartolomeu does not idealize the Angolan territory as a future independent nation, only as a source of richness upon which he can build his own empire. If he did build roads and helped in "recenseamentos," as the excerpt above indicates, it was only in order to flow the cattle and the

157 products of his farms out and into the port of Benguela, and to be able to cheat the population on their land taxes.

Joel, on the other side of the spectrum, is the character who epitomizes the democratic and multiracial ideal of building a nation that can truly accomodate all who really wish to choose Angola as their homeland. Joel says that the new Angolan song will be sung "de comicio em comicio." in all directions and incorporate the distinct ethnic communities, "criada e recriada. Pelo povo, realmente povo"

(293). And when he tells his greatgrandfather about the statue, he says that she not only represents the colonist, the new inhabitant of Angola, but adds that she has features of Africans and Europeans, and that she speaks of "uma compreensào entre os homens. Mesmo se diferentes" (294-5).

Chico, the mestizo character, can be placed between Bartolomeu and Joel, because he impersonates the ambivalence inherent in the historical process. At the narrative level, for instance, he is the character divided between the hatred of his white relatives, the Semedos — he is the "ramo proscrito da familia" — and the difficulty in accepting his African roots. Stigmatized and tom between these two worlds, he is unable to define his identity, which is neither black nor white. He is a symbol of shame for the

Semedos, and by extension, for the white population, whose complexion has been "stained." For the

Afncans, he will always be the reminder of the oppressive Portuguese presence in Africa, of the colonists who, by force, took African women for pleasure, leaving the pregnant women behind, Chico's skin complexion and his indefinite cultural origin, to a great extent, stifle his actions and rob his freedom of being able to decide fo r or against Angola, as Bartolomeu and Joel do. Because he is the prospect of the

Angolan citizen - the novo homem - he feels misplaced in the present, where a national identity has not yet been forged, where reality is still conceived as a binarv’ structure, and where the "compreensào entre os homens," which Joel speaks about, is yet far from being reached. As a conversation between Chico and

Alexandre Semedo takes place, Chico synthesizes his problems and personal saga as one related to color:

[...] É que o Huambo nào dâ para viver. Esta a ver a minha cor, nào é? Fui recusado para o serviço militar. Como tenho o quinto ano do Liceu, séria furriel. Parece que nào queriam um furriel corn a

158 minha cor. E estâo a chegar muitos recrutas, vindos de todos os lados. Entâo a cidade esta muito perigosa. Os recrutas metem-se corn as pessoas de cor nas ruas, qualquer dia vai haver problemas. O pai mandou-me para Bengueia. que é sempre mais tolérante, diz que é a cidade mestiça. (213)

This passage suggests that the mestizos feel uneasy, unaccepted, and socially and culturally marginalized

everywhere except in Bengueia. which is supposedly more tolerant toward the mixed population. But it

also shows that for the mulattos the problems in Angola are related to race, and that they tail to see that

other factors influence the difficulties Angolans are having at the pre-independence phase. It is obvious that

the existence of a safe-haven in the country where mulattos are discrimated against will not serve as a

permanent solution for the ever-growing mixed population. Chico's perception of reality signals the fact

that for the consolidation of the future nation, miles will still have to be walked, many bridges will still

have to be crossed, many inherited cathedral models, which are based on the exclusion of a given race, or

class or language, will still have to be destroyed. As a matter of fact, this same issue of ethnicity — of "uma compreensào entre homens. mesmo que diferentes" or especially when they are different — is raised in the

novel Mayombe.

This novel, which is an update, so-to-speak. of what happens to the people of Joel's generation in

Yaka, the generation that engages in the struggle for national liberation, is presented in two narrational

levels. The first one. which presents the plot of the story, portrays the problems MPLA guerrilla fighters have in reorganizing the Segunda Regiâo Politico-Militar, whose headquarters are in Dolisie. Congo

Republic, thus bordering Angola from the south. As Reisman explains, the activities in that region "had declined since the 1966-1967 surge [move to] the Frente Leste, as many of the guerrillas in Cabinda were transferred to the eastern front" (162). Thus, the plot deals with the re-establishment of the base in the

Mayombe forest, within Cabindan territory. This part of the story is narrated linearly and almost entirely in the third person singular, by an omniscient narrator. This narration, however, is interspersed with an enormous quantity of dialogues between the members of the guerrilla group, from the comrades in charge, such as the Comandante Sem medo and the Comissario. to the teacher and the trainees, voung and

159 inexperienced young men from different regions and backgrounds, who resemble the enthusiastic, naïve,

and idealistic Joel from the novel Yaka, who also volunteered to fight on the MPLA 's side of the war.

In this plot one is presented with scenes of their daily life in the forest, with an inside look at the

guerrilla fights during the period of the second war of liberation,* and deals with specific internal issues

that concern not only the liberation struggle but the future of Angola: acquisition of arms and food, the

military training of young guerrilla fighters, the isolation of the various regional guerrilla fronts, tribalism

(ethnic loyalties which impede national unity), the presence of white Africans, the mestizo individuals who

are neither black nor white, the multiplicity of vernacular languages and Portuguese, the role of the

intellectual, the raising of consciousness of the alienated majority, and politico-ideological tendencies

among the leaders of the liberation struggle. This wide range of problems, which actually escape the

specificity of the war of liberation, are issues that relate to the govemability and administration of a future

Angola.

In the second narrative level, one is presented with the stories of several members of this militar>'

base. This is the opportunity each of the guerrilla fighters has to talk about himself, his origin, his

experience, beliefs and doubts, or about something that marked his trajectory to the point that he ended up

engaging in the liberation movement. In each of these narrations, the speaker starts identifying himself as

follows: "Eu, o narrador, sou Teoria," or "Eu, o narrador, sou Milagre, o homem da bazuka," "Eu, o

narrador, sou André." Identified by their name de guerre, these multiple voices, which present the

participants' own versions of what they are experiencing there in the forest of Mayombe — from their own

truths to their own biases and ideologies — not only underscores the diversity of interests in the struggle

for liberation but also relativizes history 's usual monolithic depiction of events, just as was discussed in

* According to Reisman, the First and Second Wars of Liberation are distinguished by one important factor: The First War is of Angolans against the Portuguese, whereas the second is what some have identified as a civil war, since the different parts within Angola (FNPLA, MPLA and UNITA) are disputing the power after 1974.

160 Lueji, where the use of multiple narrators enables Pepetela to forge an "identidade através da reuniâo dos elementos dispersos de uma memôria colectiva" (Ki-Zerbo 88-R).

Furthermore, the inclusion of the various narrators' truths against the others' delineates a

“totalizing historical context of the nationalist liberation struggle from within a synchronic framework [...] less concerned with a diachronic flow of narrative events [as in Yaka], than with an in-depth examination of the context in which the events transpire” (Reisman 162). Presenting history from a synchronic perspective enhances the validity of Pepetela's attempt at rewriting the Angolan history. So. Pepetela establishes not only a dialectical representation between Portuguese and Angolan versions of history, but also a dialectical recounting of historical events from within the MPLA with all its internal contradictions, conflicts, and beliefs.

Given the magnitude of the problems presented within this totalizing view of the war. and their apparent insurmountability, in the sense that it seems impossible that a people will ever be able to overcome the countless difficulties and differences in order to reach an understanding, Pepetela opens the novel by paying these fighters a generous tribute. Pepetela presents the MPLA fighters as heroes who. against all odds, are not afraid of the threats and the difficulties they are up against:

Aos guerrilheiros do Mayombe, que ousaram desafiar os deuses abrindo um caminho na floresta obscura, Vou contar a hitoria de Ogun, O Prometeu afficano. ( 1 )

The MPLA fighters are compared to Prometheus, the wisest and most astute of Zeus's sons, who is able to overcome all threats and challenges posed by his angered father after Prometheus cheats him on several accounts, until his father recognizes his wit, bravery, and perseverance (Graves 144).

In fact, the heroes, like Prometheus, who decided to play on Zeus's side, seem to be very witty and defeat their first big enemy: Mayombe. the dark and impenetrable forest, which poses lots of threats to those who enter it, but which also becomes the hidden and safe base from which the guerrilla fighters plan

161 their attacks and perform their military trainings against the Portuguese Army. Not only do the fighters

learn to survive in the forest of Mayombe, but they are also able to learn the forest's secrets. They learn to

tame the savage monster, the mysterious and powerful god Mayombe, and make it their ally against their

foreign and domestic enemies, which they eventually defeat:

A mata criou cordas nos pés dos homens. criou cobras à (rente dos homens, a mata gerou montanhas intransponiveis, feras, aguaceiros, rios caudalosos, lama, escuridào. Medo. A mata abriu valas camufladas de folhas sob os pés dos homens, barulhos imensos no siléncio da noite, derrubou arvores sobre os homens. E os homens avançaram. E os homens tomaram-se verdes, e dos seus braços brotaram folhas, e flores, e a mata curvou-se em abôbada, e a mata estendeu-lhes a sombra protectora. e os fhitos. Zeus ajoelhado diante de Prometeu. E Prometeu dava impunemente o fogo aos homens, e a inteligencia. E os homens compreendiam que Zeus, a final, nào era invencivel, que Zeus se vergava à coragem, graças a Prometeu que Ihes dâ a inteligencia e a força para se afirmarem homens em oposiçâo aos deuses. Tal é o atributo do heroi, o de levar os homens a desafirarem os deuses. Assim é Ogun, o Prometeu africano. (80)

Thus, once the initial threat, or the most immediate enemy — Zeus-Mayombe — is overcome, these

fighters have to deal with the remaining issues which concern not just the specificity of the war itself, but

the future of the nation as a whole. Without learning how to deal with the problems, the projects of an ideal

cathedral/nation, so dearly envisioned by the fighters and the people who slowly join in the struggle, will

amount to nothing but a complete failure, and will turn out to be nothing more than an imperfect chapel.

In Mayombe. the reader becomes familiarized with the numerous problems through the various

narrators’ accounts. Tribalism is one of the issues many of the fighters raise in their personal accounts, but

it is also one brought up in the main plot. It is important to understand that this armed front at Mayombe is

formed by volunteers of different regions and ethnical origins, which consciously or not, end up forming

little divisions, rivalries, or alliances within the larger group. Needless to say, some of the rivalries and power games were not bom there, during their training, but are actually reminiscent of past times, previous tribal wars which have marked them with scars and complexes of inferiority or superiority which they can hardly leave aside even now that they have a common goal. At one specific instance in which some youngsters get into an argument, the issue of the origin of tribalism is discussed:

162 Indo para o quarto que partilhavam. Ekukui disse a Teoria: - Nào sel se o Pangu foi sô levado ou se queria mesmo arranjar uma maka [trouble]. - Os outros foram malandros. Irritaram-no e depois caiaram-se. para ser ele a enterrar-se. Ele reagiu por tribaiismo. - Ciaro, camarada professor. Mas parece a mim que ele sabia disso e nào se importou. Estava a fazer de propôsito. - Para provocar? - Sim, para provocar uma porrada tribal. - Mas com que fim? - Isso ai... O que os homens mostram é sempre uma parte pequena do que têm no coraçâo. - Achas portanto que os dois têm culpa? - Camarada Teoria. os dois queriam a mesma coisa. Quando hâ um problema tribal, nào vale a pena pensar quem é que tem culpa. Se duma vez foi um que provocou, é porque antes o outro tinha provocado. Quem nasceu primeiro, a galinha ou o ovo? É assim o tribaiismo. (116)

As Reisman explains, tribal problems, ethnie loyalty, and regionalism "become intensified within the isolated area, resulting in a threat to the unity of the guerrilla group” (164). Thus, even when they do not consciously engage in such arguments, again and again, they fall prey to their own biases, beliefs, and hang-ups. That is why the role of the leadership, of intellectuals, inserted in the struggle and not simply watching the war from behind their office desks, becomes all the more vital. Indeed. Sem Medo. the comandante. who resembles Genaro Ledesma in Scorza's La tumba del relampago. with a solid leftist orientation and a broad range of experiences at war. is able to assess objectively the ramifications and the consequences of such incidents, and knows exactly when to overlook such incidents and arguments and when to interfere. But to counterpoise those who are entangled in the webs of tribalism. Pepetela presents fighters who do not get caught in this net and attempt to see beyond tribalism for they are aware of their own worth and their role in the struggle. They are the ones who do not allow themselves to be pushed and pressured by those provoking intrigues. Muatiânvua starts his account making clear that he is an exception to the majority, a "detribalized" African:

Querem hoje que eu seja tribalista! De que tribo?. pergunto eu. se eu sou de todas as tribos. nào sô de Angola, como de Africa? Nào falo eu o swahili, nào aprendi eu o haussa com um nigeriano? Quai é a minha lingua, eu. que nào dizia uma frase sem empregar palavras de linguas diferentes? E agora, que utilizo para falar com os camaradas. para deles ser compreendido? O portugués. A tribo angolana pertence a lingua portuguesa?

163 Eu sou o que é posto de lado. porque nào seguiu o sangue da màe kimbundo ou o sangue do pai umbundo. Também Sem Medo, também Teoria, também o Comissârio, e outros tantos mais [...] eu, ladrào, marinheiro, contrabandista, guerrilheiro, sempre à margem de tudo (mas nào é a praia uma margem), eu nào preciso me apoiar numa tribo para sentir a minha força, A minha força vem da terra que chupou a força de outros homens. (140)

Muatiânvua's account touches on an important note. Angola's strength as a people, as a future nation, will not come from one or another tribe. "The understanding" they will need to reach, as Joel stated in Yaka, and which has metaphorically been exemplified through the problem of communication in different languages, will come from those aspects they have in common. This problem Angola has to face was inherited through colonialism and relates directly to the concept of nation and nationalism as conceived in Europe since its emergence in the middle of the 18th century and intensifies in the 19th century. The European concept of nation is based mainly on topoi such as territory, ethnicity (racial and cultural), language and/or religion, in other words, in some common denominator which may unite and define a given community. Nevertheless, the elements which are utilized to unify a people or differentiate it from others may cause internal differences and conflicts. Homi Bhabha states that, after all, "national definitions include more than they exclude, precisely because of the internal contradictions the term

nation' itself can sustain an almost self-annulling level of generality" (233).

The stories recreated in Yaka, Mayombe. and Lueji already present the topes of territory as the fundamental in the nation-building process. The geo-political borders of Angola that had arbitrarily been drawn by Portugal are, at this point of their historical development, taken for granted; they are a preexisting condition, so-to-speak, since the colonial period. Thus, all that arises in consequence of a nation based on territorial demarcations are topoi that have to be worked out à posteriori, such as the above-mentioned question of tribalism, race, and class relations, forms of government, official national language, and the kind of economy to be boosted, whether urban and industrial, or rural. In the novel Mayombe, the form of government towards which the MPLA leans seems to have already been chosen. Like in the Scorzian cycle of narratives, which discusses a more heterodox form of Marxism as a viable form of governing the

164 country politically and economically, Pepetela expresses his preoccupation with the necessity of adapting

Marxism to the particular context of Angola as they opt to implement a socialist form of government.

Whereas Scorza can base his critique on a century of experiences of self-government of Latin

American nations. Pepetela makes predicitons based on the inflexible position and the dogmatism of certain leaders, of the class of intellectuals within the MPLA movement itself. These leaders - as he demonstrates in the kinds of relations played out right there in the middle of the Mayombe forest - are still deeply entrapped in their own truths, and will need to become more flexible if they are to take up the role of liberators and future guides of a majority of alienated people in the newly bom nation. When Sem Medo. the comandante discusses this issue with the Comissârio, some relevant thoughts are brought up.

[...] Um partido nào é uma cape la. —Nào deveria ser uma capela, mas é. Onde é que os dirigentes discutem em pùblico? Nào, sô no seu circulo. O militante tem de entrar no circulo. pertencer à casta, isto é, tomar-se dirigente, para saber da roupa suja que se lava nas altas instâncias. Quando um dirigente é publicamente criticado. é porque caiu em desgraça, é um bispo tornado herético, um Lutero. — Entào achas que tudo se deveria fazer em frente do povo? — Pelo menos dos guerrilheiros, dos militantes, vanguarda do povo. como se diz. Voces falam tanto das massas populares e querem esconder tudo do povo. — Voces quem? — Voces, os quadros politicos do Movimento. Os que têm uma sôlida formaçào marxista. (Mayombe 126)

As their conversation goes on, Sem Medo offers a severe critique as to what might happen to Angola in the future and antecipates some of the problems that will take place if the intellectuals do not learn to become more flexible in their positions as early as in the phase of the liberation war.

— Ora! Vamos tomar o poder e que vamos dizer ao povo? Vamos construir o socialismo. E afinal essa construçào levarà 30 ou 50 anos. Ao fim de cinco anos, o povo começarâ a dizer; mas esse tal socialismo nào resolveu este problema e aquele. E sera verdade, pois é impossivel resolver tais problemas, num pais atrasado, em cinco anos. E como reagirào? O povo esta a ser agitado por elementos contra-revolucionarios! O que também sera verdade, pois qualquer regime cria os seus elementos de oposiçâo, hâ que prender os cabecilhas, hâ que fazer atençào às manobras do imperialismo, hâ que reforçar a policia sécréta, etc., etc.(Mayombe 128)

But Sem Medo also recognizes that at that moment they are doing all they can, and that their plans to make

Angola an independent country are consistent with their socialist ideals:

165 Evidentemente! Comissârio. compreende-me bem. O que estamos a fazer é a linica coisa que devemos fazer. Tentar tomar o pais independente, compietamente independente. é a linica via possivel para isso, têm de se criar estruturas socialistas. estou de acordo. Nacionalizaçâo das minas, reforma agrâria, nacionalizaçâo dos bancos. do comércio exterior, etc.. etc. Sei disso, é a ûnica soluçâo. E ao fim de certo tempo, logo que nâo haja muitos erros nem muitos desvios de fundos, o nivel de vida subira, também nâo é preciso muito para que suba. É sem dùvida um progresse, até ai estamos de acordo. [...] Mas nâo chamemos socialismo a isso, porque nâo é forçosamente. Nâo chamemos Estado proletârio, porque nâo é. Desmistifiquemos os nomes. Acabemos com o feiticismo dos rôtulos. democracia nada. porque nâo bavera democracia, bavera necessariamente, fatalmente, uma ditadura sobre o povo. Ela pode ser necessâria, nào sei. Outra via nào encontre, mas nâo é o ideal, é tudo o que sei. Sejamos sinceros connosco prôprios. Nâo vamos chegar aos cem por cento, vamos ficar nos cinquenta. Porqué entâo dizer ao povo que vamos até aos cem por cento? (128-9)

Paradoxically, one senses in Mayombe tbat at tbe same time as tbey try to forge tbe socio-political

ideals for tbe new nations, tbere is also a slow démythification of tbese same ideals. The character Sem

Medo, in opposition to other more optimistic and visionary fighters, acts as tbe devil's advocate, as an

experienced fighter and intellectual, who can see tbe reality of tbe struggle and of the future nation more

realistically, without illusions, knowing tbat not all of what is being envisioned can in fact be

accomplished, for tbe context of departure of their nation-building project differs from tbat of tbe European

nations tbat served as their model. One has to keep in mind tbat most of tbe guerrilla leaders, as tbe novel A

Geraçào da Utopia conveys, have been educated in Portugal and other European universities, thus

assimilating tbe modem model of a nation-state.

But despite tbe internal divisions and tbe tribal differences, tbe guerrilla fighters in Mayombe,

knowing tbat tbey have to get ready for a possible Portuguese attack on tbe outer limits of tbe Mayombe

forest, organize an ambush and succeed because, as is shown, tbe fighters put aside all their divergences at tbat crucial moment, and fight their common enemy together. Tbey are Prometheus in action, defying the

impossible. At this point it becomes clear tbat tbe nation-building process is one tbat will take tbe effort of many generations, and tbat only slowly will tbe project of their cathedral take tbe shape tbey expect it to:

No meio dos seus sentimentos contraditorios, Sem Medo pôs-se a pensar nas très geraçôes de combatentes que estavam representados por ele, pelo comissârio e por Vewé. A de Vewê séria fatalmente a melbor, aquela que iria conquistar a vitoria final. Nos somos as pedras, mas sô as pedras, da catedral. Ele é o tecto, a lorre do sino [...] Sem Medo realizes that at tbat point

166 "esqueceram as tribos respectivas, esqueceram o incomodo e o perigo da acçào. todos foram voluntarios — bateu na pema de Vewê. — É per isso que faço con fiança nos angolanos. Sào uns confiisionistas, mas todos esquecem as makas e os rancores para salvar um companheiro em perigo. É esse o mérito do Movimento, ter conseguido o milagre de começar a transformar os homens. Mais uma geraçâo e o angolano sera um homem novo. O que é preciso é acçâo. (232., emphasis added)

As a matter of fact, some of the dialogues in the main plot, and some of the testimonies of the single guerrilla fighters narrating deal with the issue of leadership and show their conflicting views. Mundo

Novo, for instance, is a fighter who has had the opportunity to study in Europe, is well-read and articulate, but who follows Marxist dogmas by the book, not knowing how to apply theoretical ideas in practice.

According to Sem Medo, if he is given small tasks at leadership positions now, within the fight, he will gain the lacking experience and eventually be able to take up a key position in the government of independent Angola.

In the novel A geraçào da Utopia (1992), Pepetela addresses this question of leadership again, as if following up on the issues brought up in Mayombe. Whereas Mayombe portrays Angola during the war period, A Geraçào da Utopia shows, minutely, what happens after the MPLA wins the war of

Independence, and what destiny the courageous guerrilla fighters take after the war. The title, obviously, is very suggestive, because it speaks of those who fought for Utopia, who believed an Angolan nation-state could be envisioned as this perfect utopian place where all their ideas could be implemented. But the word utopia also suggests that tliey are utopias precisely because they are a product of the imagination and can hardly be fully implemented. This is what this novel ends up demonstrating, that utopia, after three generations of struggle and two whole decades of implementation of socialist ideas, is nothing but a far fetched product of their imagination.

The novel is divided into four chapters. The first one, A casa (1961), reenacts the socio-political and cultural environment of African students who went to Lisbon, the metropolis, either to get a degree or a better chance in life in the 1960s, during the pre-Independence years. It is at the Casa do Estudante do

Império, the dorm assigned for foreign students, that most of them learn how to articulate and discuss their

167 sometimes ambiguous feelings in relation to their homeland and their Portuguese colonizers. In this fertile environment, they get acquainted with the ideology of the Portuguese communist party and its underground activities as well as with other politico-ideological movements both in Europe and Africa, for there they also meet with other international students whose background, ideas, philosophies, and academic interests help them enrich and formulate a less biased view of their own struggles and problems.

To be more specific, at the Casa do Estudante do Império. they learn that not all Portuguese agree with the government's overseas political posture on colonialism, that there is a leftist organization that actually backs up and promotes the resistance and independization movements of the colonies abroad, which eventually helps this new generation of Afiican academics and intellectuals to found the MPLA party in Angola. There, at the Casa do Estudante. Africans with different regional and racial backgrounds meet and discuss face to face their opinions and views on tribalism, nationalism, and other issues related to their own African reality and the colonial power, and where they are introduced to a rich tradition of canonical and anti-canonical discourses that will serve as the base for their own ideological constructs.

In the first chapter, the reader is introduced to five main characters, whose life and further activities and accomplishments will be developed in more detail in the other three chapters of the book.

One learns for example, that Sara is a white Angolan student of medicine. As white and female, she is sometimes seen as an ally of the African independization cause. But sometimes, as a symbol of white colonialism, since her father is one of those who went to Angola during the colonial period, she is perceived as someone who tries for a better chance in life. Her father made a fortune there and was able to send her to study in Portugal. However, as a native Angolan, she identifies much more with Africa than with Portugal, but the fact that she is white, impedes her fellow African friends from trusting her completely in certain matters of discussion.

The reader is also introduced to Anibal, an African student who becomes the intellectual mentor of the MPLA guerrilla fight (he resembles Sem Medo from the novel Mayombe). because, while in Portugal,

1 6 8 he becomes affiliated with the Communist party and is eventually sent to the Soviet Union to be trained in

warfare and guerrilla organizations. The other character the reader is introduced to is Malongo. an African

youngster who comes to Portugal on a scholarship, to play in a Portuguese soccer team. He is portrayed as

apolitical and mainly interested in making money and succeeding as a famous player. He studies only

because it is a requirement for getting a scholarship and being excused from the military service.

Then, we are introduced to Vitor. Malongo's best friend who, in contact with other more

politicized students, ends up getting involved in the independization movements and flees to France

together with Malongo. Sara, and others. From there he is taken to Argelia, where he is trained to become a

guerrilla fighter in Angola. Following the war of independence, he becomes the Minister of Interior Affairs

under the victorious MPLA party, which then begins to rule Angola. One also learns about Elias, who does

not live at the students’ dorm, for he was sent to Portugal on a grant given by a Protestant church that had

settled missions in Africa and engaged in the task of forming African leaders to continue the church's

missionary work. Elias was very political but not leftist. His ideas were from the extreme right, defending

an ultra-conservative and even racialist movement bom in Africa, which defended the supremacy of certain

tribal communities, the ÜPA. We learn that over the years UFA becomes the FNPLA and later changes into

UNITA, a party which, even after independence, kept challenging MPLA’s right to govermental power in

Angola, thus leading to the unending civil wars that debilitated any developmental projects the MPLA was

trying to implement during the first two decades after Angola's Independence.

In this chapter the reader also learns about other characters such as Horacio who becomes

interested in the study of world literature, always discussing with other students what poets in Portugal and

in other European countries, as well as what concerns Brazilian and other ex-colonial writers, were raising

in their creative endeavors. His presence, although not as a protagonist, is important in the sense that he

represents a whole batch of African youngsters who during their studies in Portugal discover their poetical and literary tendencies. Pepetela. the author being examined here, was one of those whose awareness

169 towards the role of literature in the resistance movement was reinforced and pushed forward while he studied in Lisbon.

In the second chapter. A chana (1972). one is transported to the reality of the guerrilla fights in the chana. which is a savanna region in Angola. There one meets Vitor again, and learns that the previous contacts with socialist ideas during the time of the Casa de Estudante have had a profound impact on him inasmuch as he opts for going to fight for Angolan Independence on MPLA's side. We find him in the chana by himself, lost from the remaining troop, heading toward the Zambian border, where he was supposed to get a message from the general guerrilla headquarters. As the reader accompanies his hardships alone, and starving in the chana. one is informed that the war had been going on for over eight years, and that the guerrilla fighters in each region tried to convince and recruit the masses of marginalized Africans - who had been robbed of their land and their rights during decades - to join the MPLA in the fight for independence. One also learns that after so many years fighting, the MPLA was going through an internal crisis, crisis of leaders and interests due to a number of reasons also brought up and discussed in Mayombe.

As the narrator tells the reader about Vitor’s hardships, one is also presented to another problem

MPLA is facing. The people who joined the war are beginning to lose their faith in MPLA's victor}' and their strength to continue in the struggle. Many of them, in order to save their lives, ended up surrendering to the Portuguese troops in the promise that they would be compensated if they revealed the MPLA guerrilla camp locations in the different regions and MPLA’s plans of action. As a matter of fact, the

Portuguese would fly over the different regions and, from their helicopters, spread anti-guerrilla pamphlets that promised the following to the people: ’Voces, nas matas, sofrem e morrem, enquanto os chefes terroristas vivem como nababos no estrangeiro... Voces, nas matas, vivem como animais selvagens, mas os que estâo connosco sào bem tratados, vivem como cidadàos portugueses... Nào sigam os bandidos, que estâo a aproveitar do vosso soffimento... A tropa é vossa amiga..." (Pepetela,Geraçào 123-24).

170 In moments of weakness and desperation. Vitor is presented as facing this impasse. Hungry, with hardly any ammunition, and near one of the Portuguese Army headquarters, we learn that Vitor is tempted to turn himself in. But he doesn’t do that and is finally taken safely across the border by two other guerrilla fighters he accidentally runs into. The passage which explains why Vitor actually started heading toward

Zambia is very illustrative of the difficulties they were facing as fighters, but also about the enthusiasm with which the people in the different villages would take the fighters in. since they were practically taken as heroes who were trying to rescue them from Portuguese domination after centuries of colonization and oppression. The passage below recalls the biblical image of Moses fleeing from Egypt with people whose hope, faith, and destiny dependend solely on him:

O seu grupo era composto de onze combatentes. Andavam hâ quase um mes. vindos do Bid para a fronteira da Zambia. Atravessaram os planaltos onde o mel impera. rios e riachos. pântanos. chanas. mas sobretudo matas. Nalguns sitios repousavam dois ou très dias. là onde a comida era abondante e o povo acolhedor. o que rareava com a aproximaçào da fronteira. Depois recomeçavam a travessia. cada vez mais cansados mas mais râpidos. à medida que a matas do Moxico ficavam para trâs e a Zambia vinha até eles. O homem [Vitor] fora chamado ao exterior para contactar a direcçào do Movimento e os guerrilheiros iam buscar material. Para nâo ser retardado. recusava a companhia dos elementos do povo que ao grupo pediam para se integrar e montava acampamento afastado das fogueiras de mulheres, velhos, crianças. que recuavam para a fronteira. fugindo da guerra. (.-f Geraçâo 123-4)

While Vitor is alone, lost in the chana, he often thinks about a heated discussion he once had with

Anibal during the war years in which both were heading guerrilla groups in different regions. During the war period Vitor became known as Mundial and Anibal’s nomme de guerre was Sabio. In this discussion. which Vitor recalls while he is there in the chana alone, they bring up the same old topics of tribalism. nationalism, and regionalism, discussing which leaders of which regions would be better equipped to lead the nation after Independence. As the excerpt below demonstrates, they have a hard time agreeing on questions of leadership and the problems that led to the MPLA’s war crisis:

Vês como estas. Sabio? Até jâ dizes que esta guerra é absurda. Estas compietamente desencorajado. E sabes porqué? Porque nào queres convencer-te dos erros. Como corrigir as coisas. se nâo se aceitam os erros? Chegou o momento de falar claramente. para que a guerra retome o seu sentido. O que dizes, no fundo, é o mesmo que estou a dizer. Nâo digo que a luta contra o colonialisme é absurda, mas o caminho que a guerrra tomou é absurda. Olha para os guerrilheiros. Sào hoje uns

171 foragidos. quase mercenârios, jâ nada tém de combatentes revolucionàrios. nada. absolutamente nada. Quai é o problema deles? [...] E quando hâ qualquer coisa. a desculpa é o tribaiismo. o regionalismo. Porque quele é umbundo. ou mbunda ou kangala. Ou entâo. o pior dos crimes, porque é kamundongo. Tudo isso nâo é absurdo? É preciso modificar. Como? Metendo em todos os cargos sô homens do Leste? É assim que pensas modificar a situaçâo? Nâo é isso. Mas deve-se dar mais cargos aos homens do Leste. Mesmo que sejam piores que os outros? É preciso repartir os postos mais equitativamente. A competência, a honestidade, a formaçào revolucionâria, isso nâo conta? O que conta é a regra da proporcionalidade? (A Geraçào. 147-8)

In this discussion between Sâbio and Mundial. Pepetela brings to the fore the problems of tribalism and regionalism that are actually crucial for a positive outcome of the war. in the sense that MPLA is only going to defeat the Portuguese troops if the guerrilla fighters rethink their objectives and learn to leave aside their personal tribalist biases. He also problematizes other important questions related to the differing views they have about what is going to happen to Angola if and when it becomes independent. Pepetela stimulates, as has been contended up to this point, the construction of a new myth for Angola, a Modem

Angolan Cathedral, an Angola that will be a free nation-state, that will eventually be able to build out of the colonial and war ruins a nation that will not resemble the tribal empires before the colonization period, nor one that will be a mere copy of the metropolis. In Geraçào da Utopia, when Pepetela reenacts discussions such as the one Vitor and Sâbio had during the guerrilla period, it is only to show that there should have been more of them, that a discussion on such problems has not been exhausted, and that now. from the perspective of the 1990s when the novel was written, one realizes that the task of rebuilding a nation and leading it toward a common goal is. in the least, very complex and that the lack of solution for such obstacles has interfered in the process of building a perfect cathedral, a utopia out of the struggle in

Angola.

As a matter of fact, in the remaining chapters of .4 Geraçào da Utopia: O polvo (Abril de 1982) and O tempio (A partir de Julho de 1991 ), Pepetela seems to provide the reader with an explanation as to why the national ideal was not accomplished in practice. First, Pepetela shows what happened to all these

172 idealist students who once believed in utopia. Sara flees from Portugal together with Malongo. Vitor, and others. Expecting a child from Malongo. she and he decide to stay in exile in France for a period of about

10 years. As a medical doctor, however, she is finally able to get a job as a doctor working for the socialist health system in Luanda during the reconstruction period after the war. Malongo has no opportunity to play soccer in France, and becomes an entertainer instead, an "exotic" musician in nightclubs and cabarets, hardly making ends meet; and he cares even less about Angola now than when he was in Lisbon. When he finally returns to Angola, he slowly turns to the commercialization of foreign goods.

One must keep in mind that after the war. Angola was completely destroyed, that they lacked food, industries, and everything else that would make the economic machinery of the new-born country start working. Thus. Malongo. knowing Europe, and speaking various of the European languages, on the one hand, and knowing the reality of Post-Independence Angola, on the other, decides to profit from the general chaos of internal civil wars and works as an import/export entrepreneur, who thinks not of the people or of how the new socialist government in Angola could profit from his abilities in foreign relations and international commerce; Malongo thinks only of himself.

Sdbio’s destiny is very significant. After having held a few key positions in the Post-Independence government.' Sâbio feels very frustrated with what is becoming of Angola. He has increasingly more problems with other people in ruling positions, especially with the effect of the constant civil wars that divided the masses of people and the staff in governmental positions. He also feels frustrated with the new generation of leaders (who have shown to be guided by self-interest and ended up becoming corrupt, as

Victor did). Therefore he decides to retreat to a little village by the ocean, wanting to have absolutely nothing to do with the reality outside. He clearly represents the kind of intellectual who is firm in his

’ The similarities between Sâbio, the character, and Pepetela himself should not go unnoticed. Perhaps Pepetela created Sâbio inspired in his own experiences as a guerrilla fighter and MPLA mentor, who, after Independence, also takes over an important post in the socialist government, as the Vice-

173 beliefs and does not both give in and sell out to the new postmodern and post-industrialist context of global

economic power, which is completely antagonic to the socialist government first adopted by Angola when

it became independent.

It is important to remember that from the socialist perspective the state-apparatus is responsible for the wellbeing of the people, providing equal rights and opportunities for each segment of society. But

Sâbio fails to understand that even the socialist government in Angola has not held firmly to Marxist paradigms and has created a backward and bureaucratic machinery that privileges a few while defending the rhetoric of pseudo-egalitarianism. Sâbio. unable to compromise with these new national "ideals." cannot deal with the reality of having to accept what the so-called socialist government built in Angola in place of their previously envisioned perfect Modem Cathedral.

As the chapter O polvo progresses, the reader learns about Vitor s destiny. After fighting in the war as the commandante Mundial. he becomes a corrupt and unscrupulous State-minister. who, like

Malongo. prefers to profit from the post-war situation. He and Malongo become part of the new-rich, the

African élite, who repeated some of the same mistakes of the national bourgeoisie during 19‘^'century

Europe. Malongo and Vitor had become white in their way of thinking, in their interests, in the privileges they had guaranteed for themselves, always saying that they could no longer identify with the backwardness and the traditions of the African majority due to the years in exile. They hid behind the excuse that they were unable to reverse the national situation because politicians and industrialists alike were simple puppets in the hands of a huge and totalizing bureaucratic state apparatus established during the socialist government. Thus, the unaddressed problems of health, sanitation, education, employment, industrialization, know-how. and commerce were due only to the socialist State’s unwillingness to allow private capital and foreign investments to enter the country. In the excerpt below, one can see what

Malongo and his son-in-law Orlando think about the fact that in the mid-80s, ten years as a free country.

Minister for Education. The difference between Pepetela and Sâbio is that Pepetela never gave up his cause

174 the economy should open up and the State's power reduced. Orlando does not see this as a solution, but

Malongo does.

— Mas essas mordomias vâo acabar. O Estado vai ter de se reduzir para comprimir despesas. Acabam as viagens de serviço e os carros. Acabam os monopôlios pùblicos e as ordens vindas de cima. Os privados vâo decidir sobre a vida econômica e assim dar melhores vantagens aos empregados compétentes. — Acredita reaimente nisso. senhor Malongo? - disse Orlando. - Em primeiro lugar. acredita que o papel do Estado vai ser reduzido à expressâo mais simples? Eu nâo creio. porque estamos em Africa. Isso é demagogia de alguns politicos que dizem vâo limitât até o zero a intervençâo do Estado. imitando as teorias ultraliberalistas. Mesmo nos Estatos Unidos essas teorias jâ estâo de novo a ser constestadas. Agora é moda, mas como todas as modas. fica ligada a uma década. A década de 1990 terâ outras modas. nâo essa. Os nosso politicos, como sempre. estâo atrasados. Querem imitât a linguagem do Reagan e da Thatcher, agora que o Mundo Jâ deu outra volta e eles nem se apercebem. — Acha entâo que o aparelho estatal continuarâ a ser o monstro de agora? — Poderâ ser racionalizado. mas hâ serviços mesmo que vâo desaparecer. Mas nâo serâ o enxugamento radical que estâo a prometer. Porque nâo é possivel. porque estamos num pais sub- desenvolvido. onde ou o Estado faz algumas coisas ou ninguém faz. [...] Porque se eu tivesse dinheiro para criar uma escola, ia mas é abrir um restaurante ou uma lanchonete. que dâ mais no imediato. E os nosso empresârios pensam sô no imediato. sâo empresârios primitivos. na fase de acumulaçâo primitiva do capital. Os raros empresârios corn espirito criador, que poderiamos considérât como fazendo parte de uma burguesia nacional. nâo podem atender a todas as encomendas. E os europeus dizem, uma andorinha nâo faz primavera. Alguns empresârios dinâmicos e com visâo de futuro nâo fazem uma burguesia nacional. Num pais sem burguesia nacional, ou o Estado assegura alguns serviços ou entâo é vazio. Facilmente ocupado pelos estrangeiros. Por isso esse discurso ultra-liberalista nâo é sô teôrico nem inocente. Corresponde a uma estratégia invasora por parte de quem a propaga. Que afmal sâo sempre os mesmos invasores da histôria modema. hoje com o campo todo aberto. — Bem, de politica nào percebo nada. O meu ramo sâo os negôcios. — O que é a mesma coisa. Quando diz que o Estado deve ser reduzido. estâ a fazer politica. (.-1 Geraçâo 264-5)

What Qrlando points to is the fact that both the people with a leftist point of view and those like Malongo. with rather liberal views, recognize that the socialist postulates that had been adopted by the post-

Independence government were hard to put into practice, and that the way the government conducted the implementation of socialist ideals was far from the theory. Thus, both seem to agree on the government's failure in boosting up the basic economic sectors and building a solid infrastructure for the new nation.

Orlando, however, does not share Malongo’s view that simply reducing the State’s power and letting the

and ideals and works not only as a writer but also as an intellectual, teaching in universities in Angola.

175 private initiative take over is going to solve the nation’s problem. After all. even if a national bourgeoisie

had been established, it would still not guarantee the rights and the wellbeing of the collective majority .

Orlando, in other words, is criticizing the First World and rather globalized economic model that is slowly

dictating the rules of the politico-economic game.

4.3 Facing Modernity within a Postmodern context - From Imperfect Chapels to Temples of Miracle

The problem Angola faces is, notably, the problem most of the Third-World countries face today.

By the time they finally reach political autonomy, that is, when they finally become modem nation-states,

they are unable to establish a solid economic program because of the lack of capital. But the countries that

already have established financial and economic independence are already entering a post-industrialist

phase. These countries have already abandoned some of the economic strategies the Third World is only

about to adopt: the rules of the game have already changed, and what the new Third-World nations such as

Angola see as viable is no longer a plausible alternative in the West. Thus, in order to get the support from global capitalist enterprises, they have to sell out on their national principles and submit to global economic demands. With a small bourgeoisie of capitalists who are willing to submit to these new rules for their own benefit, there will be no one to represent the interests of the majority.

In O tempio (A partir de Julho de 1991 ). .4 Geraçâo da Utopia'% last chapter, the reader is

informed of Elias’s destiny. The choices he makes in life and the people with whom he associates in

Luanda only reinforce the impression one gets from the previous chapters, that Angola’s dream of becoming a healthy modem nation is actually vanishing and giving way to a national nightmare. People

like Elias, and his friends Vitor and Malongo. who, before Independence had been given a chance to get an education, and therefore symbolized the generation of African leaders that would be able to transform the colonial society into a free and eventually prosperous nation, soon forget the collective dream and begin to pursue their own. Approximately 10 years after liberation. Elias decides to return to Angola to found the

176 Church of Dominus. which, emulating the thousands of similar fanatical and evangelistic churches that popped up in the West in the late 70s and 80s hid a potentially prosperous business behind a façade and a rhetoric of salvation. Since Elias, as a seminarian, had no investment capital to build the church, he proposes a business partnership with Vitor, the state-minister, and Malongo, the import-export entrepreneur. His arguments to convince these old friends to partake in this joint-venture is revealing of the personal interests that Elias has as a priest, and Vitor’s interest as a politician, who has power to "make things happen” when it is of his interest. As Elias bluntly puts it, the new Church might give him support now that elections are approaching.

Uma Igreja ganha prestigio e poder pelo apoio que recebe. A nossa pode ter tanta força na sociedade como essas que citaste. A sua mensagem é muito mais modema e mais de acordo com o ser profundo do homem angolano. Daqui transbordara para Africa e depois para todas as diasporas africanas. Imagina o mercado mundial de almas à nossa disposiçào. Com as crises economicas, com a perda da utopia da libertaçâo politica, com o fim do inimigo que estava do outro lado da guerra fria, com a divida externa que tira qualquer hipôtese de desenvolvimento aos nosso paises, os Jovens desempregados sem instruçào, a delinquéncia e insegurança galopantes, tudo isso leva as pessoas a verem a religiào como a ûnica salvaçâo. Todos apelam a um deus que Ihes indique um caminho na vida, que Jâ nâo têm ou nunca tiveram. Os politicos vâo namorar-nos um dia também, porque seremos a força. Mas parajâ precisamos dum pequeno apoio discreto de um politico. Uma palavrinha a quem de direito para que a Igreja seja legalizada. É isso, ainda nâo estamos reconhecidos, o que nos limita. Uma palavrinha nâo custa nada. Nâo te compromete muito. E terâs o nosso apoio quando dele précisâtes, o que vai acontecer em breve, nâo é preciso ser feiticeiro para adivinhar. Seras o ùnico comunista a ter apoio duma Igreja. (288)

This passage is not only emblematic of the corruption on the part of those in power positions, and of the new cast of entrepreneurs invading Angola, but is also allegorical of what happened to the country in general: people are hopeless and need to have their faith boosted; the country seems to be destined to the manipulation of international economic and political power games and to the individualist machinations of corrupt local politicians. Elias’s Temple of Dominus is, no doubt, the concrete image of the Imperfect

Chapel built in Angola. The Temple of Dominus is, metaphorically speaking, the new modem nation of

Angola, which is being built recklessly, no longer following a political and economic platform and a set of moral and social principles that will guarantee its solid and healthy development. When Elias and Malongo are at the construction site of the temple, Malongo asks about the architect’s project for the church, to

177 which Elias answers, “Mas anima-te. irmâo, o nosso tempio cresce. E sem arquiteto nem operarios especializados [...] Se quiseres arranjar um arquitecto. OK. nâo hâ maka. Apesar de achar que nâo é preciso, Dominus nâo ia dei.xar cair o seutempio" (301. emphasis added).

As the West enters the post-industrialist and postmodern phase, the Third-World countries in general end up suffering the most from the globalizing effects of the economy (Jameson). Just as Elias is certain that, even though there is no architect supervising the construction of the church, God will make sure there will be no catastrophes. Like most Third-World countries, Angola, inserted in this neo-liberal world, is left to its own fortune, with no one responsible for its development or its ruin. The domestic elites

- impersonated here by Malongo and Vitor - minding their personal interests, give up the nationalist cause and choose to play according to the rules of the international game. And the masses of destitute people, having no one to represent them, have no access to power, being unable to interfere in the political and economic affairs, end up being brutally manipulated by a rhetoric similar to that of Elias, Vitor, and

Malongo.

The conclusion one arrives at is that Pepetela takes it upon himself the painful task of assessing the situation of the post-Independence nation to disclose the truth that Angola, instead of taking the route of

Utopia, due not only to external but also, and perhaps mainly, to internal problems, ended up taking the route of dystopia. The doubts and fears of Third-World intellectuals such as the characters Sem Medo in

Mayombe, and Sâbio in A Geraçào da Utopia, prevailed against the naive, hopeful, and cheerful ideals of characters such as Joel in Yaka. These intellectuals knew that a truly free Angola would demand more than

Just getting rid of the Portuguese colonizer. Fredric Jameson’s article “Third-World Literature in the Era of

Multinational Capitalism” sheds some light on this problematic. As he examines the problems Third-World nations have in standing up on their own feet, he contends that generally the problem resides in the

’°The word temple is italicized in this quote because it subtstantiates the point that will be made in Chapter 5, namely, that in the postmodern era the myth of the Modem Cathedral is dispelled. In its place

178 difficulty these countries have in putting theory into practice. The theory Third-World intellectuals hold as truth is that an oppressed and colonized country needs to lead the people from concienciaa vencida to a conciencia mitica and lastly to a conciencia histôrica.

This objective is put into practice: the people, as one has seen in the Latin American and

Lusophone African context of the pre- and post-Independence struggle, are taught to think about and discuss their problems: they are made conscious of their subaltemity. and it is hoped that they will eventually realize that they, by themselves, have to change their plight instead of waiting for someone up there, in a privileged position to recognize their situation in order to do something. Karl Marx, as Berman puts it, mentions that the revolutionary power to transform an unjust society comes from the proletariat, from their attitude and their demands for change, since they are at the base of the economic structure. The question then is, why don’t the masses succeed and what elements impede their development and the successful achievement of their national goals? Theory is not achieved in practice, according to Jameson, because it is not a question of simply making the masses aware of their problems.

In the Era of Postindustrialism, the middle class, and especially the ruling class, prove not to have changed their own mentality. The laborers, the rural workers (campesinos), the native populations of

Indians and Africans, if we just consider the context from Latin America and Africa, are fighting for their rights but is the élite doing the same? Is the elite’s discourse the same as that of the masses? Is their cause the same? The national elites in the Third World, compared to the international scenery, are also subaltern and inferior, but instead of identifying with their people and voicing the hardships of their countries and embracing the country’s causes, opt to become a part of that supranational élite of politicians, entrepreneurs, and rulers who manipulate and determine the rules of the global economic game, disregarding completely their place of origin and the people and nations they were once representing.

one witnesses the appearance of Temples of Miracle.

179 Jameson affirms that this might be due to the fact that the concrete transformation of a subaltern mentality comes only through a real cultural revolution as envisioned in the Marxist tradition. A change from a conciencia vencida, to a mitica, to a conciencia histôrica has to be accompanied by a cultural change of habits, a change in the psychic structure. Jameson contends that "when a psychic structure is objectively determined by economic and political relationships, it cannot be dealt with by means of purely objective transformations of the economic and political situation itself, since the habits remain and exercise a baleful and crippling residual effect" (76). He links this problematic of the cultural revolution with the question of theory and practice by stating that "[tjhis is a more dramatic form of that old mystery, the unity of theory and practice; and it is specifically in the context of this problem of cultural revolution that the achievements and failures of third-world intellectuals, writers and artists must be replaced if their concrete historical meaning is grasped” (76).

Jameson’s statement, within the context of the élite characters of the novel A Geraçâo da Utopia, helps explain how damaging Vitor’s. Malongo's. and Elias's selfish attitudes are in relation to the masses of Angolans who. to a great extent, depend on the politico-economic élite. They have indeed failed to embrace the national cause. They might have participated in the war of liberation and embraced the liberation cause at first, but their attitudes betray their egotistical interests. They have not changed their habits, they have not really changed their subaltern mentality, and have reduced the problems in Angola to the realm of economic and material development, without understanding that their attitude, their behavior and mentality should change as much as their concrete material reality. Instead, they look fatally down at the people and at the reality of Angola and pretend there is nothing they can do except fight to guarantee their own wellbeing. And what they offer to the people is contained in the excerpt above about the role of the Church of Dominus: the people have to be given an illusion, something to hold on to. just like

Dominus’s promise of a rhetoric of hope, for people need to believe in something. "Todos, " according to

Elias, "apelam a um deus que Ihes indique um caminho na vida, que jâ nâo tém ou nunca tiveram " (288).

180 Elias’s Temple of Dominus, in A geraçào da Utopia, contrasts sharply with the image of the Yaka statue, whose separate limbs would eventually be united in order to form a solid and complete body, without wounds and handicaps. Yaka. supposedly, would represent this sacred and perhaps immaculate body, this mythical national ideal that the people would forge together. In contrast to the image of Yaka,

Elias’s Temple of Dominus is a cheap replica of the western Modem Cathedral Angolans had envisioned for themselves. Pepetela calls it an Imperfect Chapel. But more than just "imperfect. " Elia’s Temple of

Dominus stands for the Temples of Miracle being erected in this period of disillusionment and loss of faith.

All of those who have onced fought so hard to erect the autochtonous Modem Cathedral, are experiencing the fall from the sacred in this postmodern age. The temples of Miracle substitute, even if only momentarily and provisionally, the tmths and the myths deconstructed during this age in which again all that is solid melts into air. Instead of delivering the promise of solid mythical tmths. of sacredness, of hopefulness, the Temples of Miracle promise only instant gratification, temporary hope for they Just another object in this consumerist society for which there is a demmand. And like any object, it will easily be replaced by something else. They deliver momentary miracles that will quickly vanish into air.

181 CHAPTER 5

TEMPLES OF MIRACLE

Tu, por exemple, sei que es milicnârio. E o Vitor que pode nào ter muito dinheiro para arriscar, mas tem influência. Corn apoio desses, construe uma igreja grande. Mas o mais importante é estender a organizaçào a todo o lado. conquistar o amer dos homens. Com o amer dos homens. é évidente que a Igreja pode também ganhar parte do dinheiro das pessoas. o amer é isso, é saber partilhar. Falando ciaro. ando à procura de sôcios corn poder e dinheiro. O reste eu faço. (A Geraçâo 281)

As pessoas sentem que estào meihor, mais alegres. mais disponiveis. com mais capacidade de comunicaçào, mais optimistas. [...] o importante é isso. na fé do Dominus as pessoas sentem-se alegres e fortes, optimistas.(A Geraçào 282)

Estas certamente a falar do culte. Chama-lhe show, se quiseres. Tem muito a ver com espetâculo. claro. A Psicologia explica a necessidade do culte, para fazer of fiéis comungarem corn a divindade. O sacerdote tem o papel fundamental, pois faz a ligaçào. Quanto meihor e o sacerdote como actor, mais emoçào consegue ele criar. e mais forte é o elo entre a massa de crentes e a divindade. Neste caso. a electrônica ajuda muito. O som tem de ser bem forte, hâ ritmos prôprios que devem ser mantidos, os ritmos que estâo de acordo com a cultura original das pessoas. Aqui é o batuque. na Europa serâ outro. A litania em cadências ancestrais provoca um efeito proximo da hipnose, o que facilita a compreensao das verdades supremas e o fortalecimento do poder da mâo. {A Geraçào 282)

[...] Bem, nunca tentaste integrar os OVNI e os extra-terrestres na tua religiào? Isso mexe com a imaginaçào das pessoas.(A Geraçào 286)

Show de primeira, os patrieios vào pagar bué para ver.(A Geraçào 287)

E no fundo continua religioso, nisso nào mudou muito. Sô que agora mudou de religiào. para a do prazer. Esta a desforrar-se dos traumas que os protestantes Ihe devem ter causado com aquela moral puritana deles. Este gajo é uma mina. (A Geraçào 289)

5. 1 Lusophone-African Real Maravilloso

The Portuguese critic Pires Laranjeira contends that writers of the new generation of Angolan

Literature are relentlessly leaning towards the Real Maravilloso. Specifically about José Agualusa

182 Laranjeira affirms that he attempts to "preencher os espaços vazios que a histôria angolana nos legou com a

irreaiidade de uma histôria ficcionada [...] com a ambigiiidade simbôlica e mitica que a abertura plurivoca

do signo possibilita" (102, emphasis added). This can be observed in writers of the preceding generation of

Lusophone African writers who (see Chapter 4). after having written many novels within the neorrealist

mode, eventually end up resorting to a narrative mode that resembles the fantastic and marvelous real

inasmuch as they transpose into their writing the techniques of oral tradition.

In order to best understand how this evolution takes place, and why the present generation

actually produces Real Maravilloso narratives, it is imperative to first look at one of Pepetela’s latest

novels, O Desejo de Kianda (1995) - where he definitely breaks from his previous historical and neorrealist

novelistic style and adopts the marvelous real narrative mode. Then we will be able to proceed into the

analysis of José Eduardo Agualusa's work.

5.1.1 From retelling history to storytelling

As was seen in Chapter 4, the first generation of Angolan post-independence writers engaged in

the simultaneous tasks of a)rewriting the history of colonization from the point of view of those left out of

the official historical accounts; and b)of forging national foundational narratives that better addressed and projected the expectations, ideals and real needs of the new and autochthonous nation-states. In their pursuit of building their Modem Cathedral, such writers created a modem national myth that would be more suitable for the socio-cultural and political idiosyncrasies of Angola. This is what could be observed

in the novel A Chaga, by Castro Soromenho, and in Yaka. Mayombe and Lueji. by Pepetela. However, as these writers formulated these new historical accounts and these new autochthonous modem myths, they began to realize that some of their assumptions, that some of the new forged expectations, needed to be examined and revised. They realized that their own myths, just like the European Enlightenment myth, had their own flaws and pitfalls. Pepetela's novelsMayombe and Geraçâo da Utopia exposed some of the

183 problems of their own modem cathedral; their narratives exposed "as debilidades e as inconseqüências do

primeiro nacionalismo angolano" (Laranjeira 102). Even though they had envisioned perfect modem

cathedral, what they were able to build, to forge, were actually Imperfect Chapels, in the words of Pepetela

himself.

In the process of assessing his own discourse Pepetela realized that the very tool he used to forge a

national ideal - the European novel - presented its limitations and actually hindered the emergence of his

ultimate goal: to contribute to the writing of a myth that would lead the people from a downtrodden consciousness to a historical consciousness. The European novel, even in its neorrealist version, was

ladden with values and principles the Angolan people could not really identify with. In Chapter 2 it was demonstrated that the European novel has always been a powerful instmment in aiding the bourgeoisie to eliminate and deligitimize all that was idiosyncratic and different, from language, folklore and traditions, to the peoples’ own way of generating and perpetuating knowledge. This process of elimination of heterogeneity - experienced so truthfully by the subgroups and subcultures within the European modem nations - was carried out even more forcefully and tragically in the colonies. Therefore, after

Independence, writers felt the urgent need to forge narratives that would help the downtrodden and powerless indigenous groups regain their identity and sense of worth. But to attain the purpose of getting the people engaged in the act of discussing the kind of nation they would like to construct, what to erect in the place of the ruins of the colonial cathedral, writers had to question the very tool of their writing. They had to call into question the means through which they constructed their narratives. In other words, they had to begin deconstructing the European novelistic mode and “camivalize" it, transform it, subvert it for their own interest. They had to create a narrative language that resembled the people's own oral traditions.

They had to go from re-telling history to telling stories. This new approach should thus be understood as a way to more effectively lead the people to a historical consciousness, to an understanding of their role in the challenging process of building their national cathedrals.

184 5.1.2 The cracks in the national edifice - the Imperfect Chapel

One would expect that the people in any new-born nation, especially a people who had been

uprooted, enslaved, colonized and exploited, would do anything to ensure the healthy development of their

new nation. In the novel Mayombe, Pepetela in fact demonstrates how the people of various different

regions and tribes engaged in the collective struggle of fighting the Portuguese armed forces during the

period of independence wars. InGeraçào da Utopia we learn, however, that after Independence was gained, even though a lot of the guerrilla fighters took over important political offices and administrative

post in the government, thus leading the cultural, the educational, the industrial, and the economical sectors, a very representative number of individuals within the national elite ended up taking personal advantage of the power they had acquired and boycotted numerous of the socialist government’s initiatives.

The fact that there was corruption, in other words, within the new national middle and upper classes could only mean one thing: that this new modem myth, this dream of a new and more autochthonous cathedral was not really shared by everyone. This dream was by no means collective and, most likely, because a lot of the people, especially those who have had closer contact to Europe, to the western world in general, eventually did lose touch with their primordial African soul.

Thus, the quest for a desirable historical consciousness would have to be achieved through the restoration of the people's traditional past, their mythic consciousness. For the people to again become conscious of who they are, what they aim for, what their present and future holds for them, they must engage in a dialogue with their past, from the knowing of who they once were. This new quest, however, does not imply a nostalgic search for a lost past, but a recognition of what elements from the past to salvage, to rescue and restore. It is the search for those elements in the past which can help the fragmented and ambiguous individual to regain sight of himself. In his critique of the ultra or postmodern phase in the

West, Marshall Berman contends that it was precisely the fact that the modem European man began to

185 disregard his past experiences (and only look into the future) what led him to develop thislaissez faire

posture. This is what led him to develop an apparent disbelief and loss of faith in the traditional humanist

subject. The modem individual in the West and elsewhere has become fragmented and can no longer think

in collective terms. This is why Linda Hutcheon calls for a Postmodern poetics in which the past, its

various historiographical accounts, have to be re-examined; its texts, its myths, its truths deconstructed and

de-centered, so as enable the modem individual to derive new meanings from it and re-direct him into the

future. As Hutcheon affirms, "to reinsert the subject into a framework of its parole and its signifying

activities (both conscious and unconscious) within an historical and social context is to begin a force of

redefinition not only of the subject but of history as well" (159).

It is thus within this frame of thought that the emergence of the Real Maravilloso in Lusophone

Africa has to be understood. In their quest to forge a new modem myth, but not a myth that will erect

Imperfect Chapels or temporary Temples of Miracle, the postcolonial writers decide to shift from the re

telling of history to the telling of stories, for it is only through the re-centering of the marginalized

individual, his voice, his culture and imagination, that this individual can begin to make sense of his

present and actually build meaningful new myths. The word meaningful is hear used to underscore the fact that the new myths, to be generated, will have to deliver something more solid than the myths propagated

by the Temples of Miracle. The myths to come will have to replace the false and instant promises delivered by the postmodem “temples”, for they are temporary solutions that do not help the skeptic and disillusioned (post)modem individual to tmly disalienate himself.

5.1.3 The Postmodem Temples of Miracle

The context in which the story of the syndrome takes place is. like in Luegi and in Geraçào da

Utopia, the post-Independence period. But in this story Pepetela seems to call more attention to the fact that Angola is trying to become a nation during a period in which the First World is already shifting its

1 8 6 economic and political interests by turning into postindustrial societies. This fact obviously makes it even more difficult for underdeveloped nations such as Angola to deal with their internal problems, especially because the national bourgeoisie is actually lining up with foreign" interests instead of defending those of the nation as a whole.

In O Desejo de Kianda, as will be seen, the internal problems are endless. The reader is presented with the concrete consequences of the civil wars, the dispute for power, the various tribes from different regions on the country complotting with UNITA against the MPLA's right to the government. These various elements added up are responsible, to a great extent, for the failure and the frustration of the liberation war guerrilla fighters who so willingly struggled to make Angola a free and excelling modem nation. These civil wars, as the narrator suggests, are responsible for the chaos, for dystopia. The civil war

estava mais forte do que nunca. O Pais todo mergulhado nela. As cidade eram reduzidas a ruinas pelos bombardeamentos continuos. As pessoas fugiam das cidades para se refugiarem nos campos, por onde deambulavam, procurando comida. As que nào podiam fugir das cidades comiam gatos. ratos, càes. até jâ nào terem mais nada para roer. Um vento de loucura e morte varria o territôrio. Nos raros sitios onde nào havia guerra. a persistente subida dos precos ia empobrecendo todos os dias a populaçào. Até onde vamos descer? Se perguntavana na bicha do maximbombo, na (fente das lojas com produtos que poucos podiam comprar, nos hospitais sem medicamentos nem algodào nem gaze, nas escolas sem livros nem carteiras. Luanda se ia enchendo de gente fugida da guerra e da fome, num galopante e suicidârio crescimento [...] Simultaneamente as pessoas importantes tinham carros de luxo. de vidros fumados. niguém que Ihes via a cara. passavam por nos e talvez nem olhassem para nào se incomodarem corn o feio espetâculo de miséria.( 100)

Like in .4 Geraçào da Utopia, where Victor, the politician. Malongo. the entrepreneur, and Elias, the bishop of the Temple of Dominus preferred to ignore the real plight of the people in the country that was making them rich, also in O Desejo de Kianda. as the passage above shows, both the political and the business elite take on an absenteist/withdrawn attitude, pretending that they are neither responsible for the current situation nor that it is their duty to attempt to change anything. They adopt the already mentioned laissez faire posture with which Marshall Berman described the elite, the intellectuals and the ruling classes within First World nations in the postmodern era. The elite washes its hands of the responsibility by conveying themselves as victims of a much broader and global economic situation. They are as powerless

187 in relation to world politics as the lower classes are, and because of that, they choose to be aloof.

There is one character whose behavior comically illustrates the fact that people in the middle

class, such as the public servant Joao Evangelista, and the individuals of the elite, frequently choose not to

acknowledge the problems of their immediate socio-political reality. The narrator informs us that while the

buildings were crumbling in downtown Luanda and while chaos was taking over the whole country

because of the civil wars, Joâo prefers to remain inside his apartment playing video-games. He was

especially fascinated by war games. Around the time the last building of the Kinaxixi was about to crumble

- the building in which Joao Evangelista and his wife were living - he had just discovered a video-game

called "The Creation of Civilizations." The juxtaposition of this game, in which the player is able to create

new civilizations - against Evangelista's immediate reality of crumbling buildings, is comic and ironic, to

say the least. While his very building was coming down he was there trying to

fundar cidades, arma-las, fazê-las desenvol ver através da ciência e da economia e até mesmo da evoluçào politica, com revoluçôes e mudanças de regime. Depois de ir conquistando as outras civilizaçôes até se criar um império à escala mundial. Enquanto o bombardeamentos se sucediam nas ruas de Luanda, ele se fechava no escritôrio tentando conquistar Roma ou Babilônia com catapultas e depois com canhôes e blindados.(49-50)

His behavior is emblematic of the reaction of the middle class as well as the ruling class which is oblivious

to everything that is happening outside their "perfect" little worlds. Joâo Evangelista was not in the least worried about losing his apartment because he was not losing his own money. Because his wife was a

political figure, they apartment had been subsidized by the government. Besides, she was already involved

in a scheme to get them a house in the suburbs.

The chaos, the loss, the syndrome did not affect him in the least. Joao Evangelista is undoubtedly representative of the social segment that is not being affected by the socio-political and economic problems. On the contrary, he takes part of that small group of individuals who actually plays along the rules of a broader international game that actually dictates the posture taken by the national and local ruling class.

1 8 8 According to postmodern theories, one could state that Joâo Evangelista's behavior is illustrative of the present situation, perhaps a reflection on postmodern thought. In this new postindustrialist era. in which there is no longer an organic center which structures the world as a whole, there also is no longer a definite center of power. Power will fluctuate and be determined by international markets, by transnational financial schemes which, in turn, will determine the economy of local markets, its inflation rates, the value of local currency, and so forth. Thus, the local elite will always have the excuse of saying that they are helpless and subject to broader economical and political moves, without power to determine the political and economic destiny of their nation. When the world as a whole reaches this state, as Berman contends, the national bourgeoisie, constituted by both its right and left wing intellectuals find an excuse to surrender to their own personal and bourgeois self-interests. They use the excuse that there are no longer values and principles to pursue, that the only ideology still existing is the ideology of late capitalism, that is, of large conglomerates, of cybernetic highways, and that because of that they have absolutely no access to power nor any possibility of transforming anything. It is the era in which each and everyone should mind his own selfish business and create a bearable reality for himself, the discourse of a collective myth and a common national ideal seizes to have meaning. Thus, the elite, the middle class and the lower class, will, all within their own possibilities, try to make the best and get the best out of the situation. The profit generated by the

Syndrome of Luanda is an example of precisely this attitude. Since chaos is the order of the day, lets make the best of it. Within the view that the new postmodern order de-centers any universal axis, any organizing structure, any moral or ethical value, the individual feels free to seek his personal goals without scruples, without consideration and respect for the other. All others will compete for a position within the power game.

Contrary to the modem bourgeoisie, this new postindustrial, postmodern elite does not need the ideological support of the middle class; what it needs, instead, is the support of the middle and lower

189 classes consumerist pattern. This is where the difference in perspective between Modernity and

Postmodemity lies; the power games, the metanarrative of legitimation are deconstructed and abandoned,

and now, whether in the First World or in the Second or Third World, individuals are left to deal with their

own destiny, with their own impulses, with their own frustrations. These frustrations are going

compensated by today’s new religions and by today’s new technological toys. Today’s new religions - the

new temples of miracle - can be illustrated by Elias Temple of Dominos in Geraçào da Utopia and in

Agualusa’s Eslaçâo da Chuva. Characters in both novels realize that is a profitable business, a very needed

commodity, to offer people instant promises and instant hopes through the construction of temples that

fabricate miracles and faith in exchange for small contributions. These newly founded churches preach one

day and deliver miracles the next. And they collect the people’s income the day after that. As Santiago, the

character in Agualusa’s novel puts it. erecting a church is synonym for creating a new business:

- Montei um negocio com o pro feta. Na verdade eram varios negocios, nem todos muito claros. Por um lado haviam fundado uma seita. a Igreja do Cristo Redentor negro. Sexta-feira à tarde reuniam-se para rezar. cantar e dancar. Ao sabado faziam milagres: - Grandes milagres - garantiu Ninganessa com voz grave. - Coisas de muita maravilha e inspiraçâo. {Estaçâo das Chuvas 274)

And everybody returns home with the wonderful sensation that they still have a truth to hold on to.

In view o f this, it is understandable that Pepetela. in O Desejo de Kianda, prefers to no longer

promote the modem myth of the Enlightenment, nor its "Angolan" version of it, but rather opts to represent

the marvelous real, fantastic and unbelievable historical reality of Angola. The European novelistic genre, the metanarrative, in its realist version, or in its neorrealist form, which problematizes the derealized reality constructed by the bourgeoisie, is not capable of simultaneously presenting a multiplicity of realities without ideologically legitimating one over others. If one recalls Bahkthin’s argument in The Dialogic

Imagination, each voice in heteroglosia stands for and reinforces an ideology. The text is construed from the tension between these competing ideologemes or voices, in which one always defeats the others, one

190 always deconstructs the others, in an infinite battle of ideologies that are again set as essentials truths.

Therefore. Pepetela begins to problematize the choices he has made as a writer, questioning in O Desejo de

Kianda, as well as in Luegi. the very instruments of expression he utilized.

5.1.4 Resemanticizing ancient myths

If in Geraçào da Utopia Pepetela raises the problematic of dystopia and disillusionment the people experience in relation to the modem Angolan myth, inO Desejo de Kianda one sees this disillusionment even more strongly acknowledged. As readers we wimess Pepetela dismantling the utopian myth and exposing dystopia, as if declaring that the long envisioned myth has died. He exposes the crude and brutal reality of Angola. But at the same time as he portrays the chaos, the hopelessness and the "cracks in the edifice"' of the new nation-state at the dawn of the postmodern era, Pepetela also focuses on the recreation of lost traditional myths. In fact, what Pepetela is able to accomplish in O Desejo de

Kianda coincides with McHale’s theory that the more writers become postmodern in their style, the more one notices a change in dominant from epistemological to ontological issues. In Lueji. if one recalls from

Chapter 4, Pepetela already began to substitute the previous epistemological orientation of East versus

West, traditional versus modem, socialist versus capitalist, masses versus elite. He began to consider as viable and necessary the coexistence of these elements and a more pluralistic interpretation of reality. The very notion of historiographical accounts was questioned, and Lueji. the main character in that story, comes to the conclusion that it is only through the simultaneous reading of various and differing accounts of the past that she would be able to derive meaning for the present situation in Angola. In Lueji. another words,

Pepetela begins to experiment with the notion of intertextuality and with the new-historicist approach

'The image of cracks in the edifice comes from Frantz Fanon, who, in The Wretched o f the Earth. deals precisely with the problems of the national bourgeoisie and the pitfalls of national consciousness. He contends that the national bourgeoisie of underdeveloped nations had become mere intermediaries of foreign companies, its function consisting simply of "being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism that puts on the mask of neo-colonialism" (152).

191 brought forth in postmodern discussions.

In O Desejo de Kianda this change in dominant becomes even more visible. Pepetela explores the

possibility of presenting simultaneously two accounts of the same event. The first one resembles the

novella, inasmuch as it is a much shorter narrative, with a much more linear and simplified plot. It is

however filled with marvelous real and fantastic episodes. The second account is a fable-like story that

originates from the oral tradition and brings back to memory the forgotten and unintelligible myth of

Kianda. This parallel and almost "intrusive" fable is subtly woven into the main story as an uninvited guest, as an unrepressible force that makes itself felt as the main plot develops.

Since Pepetela no longer insists on the portrayal of an ideal nation and gives up this civilizational project, the main plot simply retells the story of an incredible phenomenon taking place in Luanda during the first post-colonial phase in which the socialist government is already, supposedly, implementing the changes that are eventually going to make the new modem country strive. The incredible phenomenon is soon identified as the Syndrome of Luanda. It is called a syndrome because what happens is not an isolated case. One by one the buildings in Kinaxixi, the business square (the "Wall street" of Luanda), begin to crumble, leaving a large number of people either homeless or without an office. In the story the socialist government is always Just identified as O Esiado takes a long time to decide what to do about these people, and their eventual bureaucratic actions, as it turns out, are inefficient and useless. When "the State" realizes that the crumbling of the first building was followed by many others and could no longer be interpreted as an isolated case of engineering miscalculation, it has experts come from different parts of the world to study the phenomenon. None of the engineers, however, comes up with a reasonable explanation. Nobody seems to have the expertise explain what caused the collapse of these buildings or what could explain the fact that the people and the things inside the buildings, even as they fell, remained exactly in the same position, and, what is more fantastic, unscathed: "Como se pode depreender, apenas o prédio ficou destruido, totalmente em escombros. Nem pessoas, nem outros locatarios animais, nem moveis, nem eletro-

192 domésticos. sofreram qualquer arranhào "( 10).

The passage in which the narrator tells how extraordinary this event is. that none of the people in the buildings are injured and that none of the things are damaged, is filled with humor and even sarcastic commentaries regarding the social behavior of the upper-class, because the commentaries expose the life and the activities, many of them illicit activities, of the people who live or do business in these modem buildings of the Kinaxixi district downtown. One learns, for example, that when the first building collapses, a huge king size bed comes down, with a couple having sex. "Nada de assinalâvel," says the narrator, "se nâo se tratasse de dois homens, figuras pûblicas de destaque, uma da politica e outro das artes"(10). Because none of the experts was able to explain the syndrome, journalists from all over the world are flown into Luanda to report on it, and ironically, little by little, the news of this horrible catastrophe spreads worldwide, attracting hordes of tourists. This in turn, proves to be very beneficial to the country's economy, as local businesses begin to make more profit and foreign capital starts flowing in at an unprecedented rate. The tragedy of the buildings, in other words, is made into a profitable business and the homeless people, the usual victims within the new modem Angolan society, are once again forgotten.

5.1.5 Fable and Riddles; the past reinterpreting the present

That is why it is important to tum, at this point, to the "intruding" plot inO Desejo de Kianda.

This parallel story, which supposedly interferes in the narration of events in the Syndrome of Luanda, as one finds out in the end of the book, offers an explanation for the cause of the catastrophe. Written in a different graphical font, this minor text - not a subplot - is actually the voice of Kianda, a very low voice which always starts with the same sentence: "um cântico suave e dolosoro ia nascendo no meio das aguas,,." and would almost invariably end with "o cântico era demasiado suave, ninguém ouvia" (14).

Because it is a soft chant, an almost inaudible lullaby, the people, the authorities, the tourists, the experts and the joumalists, busying themselves with the syndrome and/or the profit it is generating, are completely

193 oblivious to its sound. Just the reader is aware of its existence and intrigued by it, but also unable to

understand its message until the end of the story. This undecipherable "cântico." as the narrator explains it, comes from Kianda, and Kianda’s desire to be free, to break out and develop its roots. This is also when the reader finally understands the title: the reader learns that Kianda is the story of an ancient tree that had been cut down in the name of modem western civilization, that is, it was cut down to make room for urbanization, for the development of the Kinaxixi district. At the end one finally understands the symbolism of the Kianda tree: its trunk and branches are emblematic of a welter of native traditions: and its roots standing for a millenar civilization. The roots, the trunk and the branches of the tree were cut down in the name of prosperity, of civilization, as soon as the Portuguese set foot on the African territory. The buildings - the modem cathedrals - were erected right there on the spot where Kianda used to be, and in the frenzy of modernization apparently no one realized that Kianda’s spirit had survived throughout the centuries and was building up strength to finally erupt like the lava of a volcano, like an uncontrollable force rebelling against the pseudo-winds of Modemity. Two characters eventually are able to unravel the mystery, this ancient myth of death and rebirth. A little homeless and orphan girl called Cassandra, who used to play by the banks of the lake - where the Kianda tree grew and where the buildings had been erected - began hearing this low ballad or chant coming from the waters. But she could not make out its meaning, and no one would hear it and believe in what she heard. Finally, however, "velho Kalumbo” - emblematic perhaps of the old generation of wise people who never really felt thrilled about the changes occurring in this new and modernized Angola - begins to pay attention to the little girl. He provides her with an explanation: "pode ser Kianda a cantar. Kianda se manifesta de muitas maneiras - disse ele para

Cassandra. - Umas vezes sâo fitas de cores por cima das aguas, pode ser um bando de patos a voar de maneira especial, um assobio de vento, por que nào um cântico?" (99). As this wise old man - undoubtedly representative of the welter of traditions and vernacular languages the younger generations were no longer exposed to - gives her his explanation, one realizes that the root cause of such tragedy can be blamed on

194 Colonialism, which changed the order of nature, the order of things. It changed, furthermore, the way

people think. Estranged from the African traditions, the lore, the stories and their ancient belief systems,

this new generation of native Africans, embodied by the little girl Cassandra, is not able to interpret its

reality with a code that belongs to earlier generations. Cassandra does not understand the chant, the sounds,

the voice and/or the language of Kianda. Only the old man still possessed the wisdom to make sense of

Kianda's words: "Os colonos nos tiraram a alma, alterando tudo, até a nossa maneira de pensar Kianda. O

resultado esta ai nesse Pais virado de pemas para o ar" (99). Through Colonialism the people had lost their

soul. They had become alienated from their own cosmology, their own imaginary, and were therefore

unable to think, to rationalize in the Kianda way. With Kalumbo's help, this girl, standing for the

generation of the future, "[ia] reconstituindo o lexto. Mas havia uma palavra em branco. E bastava

Cassandra se aproximar da borda para ouvir. noite e dia, a qualquer hora. Kianda nào cansava de

cantar?"(99, emphasis added).

As can be realized, this intruding story, the story of Kianda, is very important within the

discussion of Postmodemity because it underscores an unusual trend of postmodern fiction which is to

rescue myths and stories from orality. Here the inclusion of the fable of Kianda calls attention to the fact that a people can only develop historical consciousness if it recovers its mythic consciousness. This mythic

consciousness, in tum, can be recovered through the revalorization of lost oral traditions, since they

provide the people with the tools to interpret reality.

5.1.6 Historical consciousness through mythic consciousness

The story of Kianda denounces the fact that a people who has been under the oppressive administration of a colonial government cannot grow out of a downtrodden consciousness (conciencia vencida) and into a historical consciousness {conciencia histôrica) without first disalienating itself, that is, without getting back in touch with its original collective self, with its primordial soul, without developing a

195 mythic consciousness {conciencia ntitica).- Thus we can observe an evolution in Pepetela's own perception of Angolan reality and Pepetela's own role as a writer. InYaka, Mayombe and Luegi he concentrated mainly on the emergence and solidification of a conciencia histôrica. After almost five hundred years of colonization the official historical accounts and the justifications for colonialism had to be deconstructed. The parameters which the new-born nation would follow in pursuit of its goals had to likewise be discussed and problematized. In O Desejo de Kianda. however, he focuses on the mythic consciousness and suggests, through the voice of old Kalumbo. that Angola is not going to achieve its national goals and progress at the pace and manner in which it had been idealized if the rebirth of a mythic consciousness does not take place. Through old kalumbo Pepetela criticizes the national bourgeoisie, which instead of looking out for the interests of the nation and its people, offers them no more than Temples of

Miracle. Kalumbo's words point clearly to the fact that the new ruling class has not reconnected to the primordial soul of the people it represents. If in the previous novels Pepetela contributed to the forging of a national ideal, a new and modem myth whereby to pursue the construction of a new modem cathedral and articulated the desires and the necessities of the new Angolan man. in the story of Kianda he seems to show that this new modem man. this new capitalist man. is actually not a new-bom man. but only a bad emulation of the European modem man. In fanon terms, the emulation of the decadent European bourgeoisie. The new modem Angolan man has not developed his mythic consciousness. Without this consciousness the new modem man simply emulates the behaviors inherited from the bourgeoisie in the

West. According to Frantz Fanon,

it [the national bourgeoisie) follows the Westem bourgeoisie along its path of negation and decadence without ever having emulated it in its first stages of exploration and invention, stages which are an acquisition of that Westem bourgeoisie whatever the circumstances. In its beginning, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie in the West. We need not think that it is Jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness, or the will to

’ This point was already developed in Chapter 3 when the novels by Manuel Scorza were analyzed.

196 succeed of youth.(I53)

If this is how the bourgeoisie in most underdeveloped nations ends up implementing the ideal of

the Enlightenment Project, the modem nation-state, what can be expected from the masses of people who

have given their lives for the cause of independence and have, thereafter, placed their hopes and ideals in

the hands of such ruling class? Fanon is unscrupulous in affirming that the urban working class, the unemployed masses and even those in the autonomous professions "line up behind this nationalist attitude."

In the same way as the bourgeoisie goes against the European colonizer, the people will go against the non national Africans. Subsequently they will go against people of different racial or religious origins and this, ultimately, culminates in racism, tribalism and regionalism, just as Pepetela portrays in the novels Yaka and

Mayombe. Since the national bourgeoisie makes no effort to help restore a national identity inasmuch as it

"cuts itself off from the people" as a whole, civil wars pop up hindering even more the reconstruction process. In Mayombe and in Geraçào da Utopia, Pepetela demonstrates that one of the priorities of the post-Independence government would precisely be to restore the people's collective identity, wounded during colonialism. Since the entailing civil wars only reinforced these divisions, in O Desejo de Kianda

Pepetela opts to leave aside the idea of promoting a national myth and prefers to capitalize on the necessity of promoting the mythic consciousness. The message Pepetela seems to be giving is that the modem

Angolan man, the Faust of the tropics, so-to-speak, represented by the interests of the new national bourgeoisie, had to back up and go in search of his lost soul - sold to Mephistopheles - before continuing in the modernization enterprise. In O Desejo de Kianda Pepetela seems to be contending that no reconstruction effort is going to be fruitful and no modem cathedrals can be built until the mythic foundation is solidly recovered. Without appropriating the old myths, the ancient traditional knowledge, there can be no common imaginary to interpret and derive meaning from the new chaotic reality of civil wars and neo-colonial exploitation. Kianda’s voice. Kianda's spirit would have to be heeded before anyone

197 would really understand the Syndrome of Luanda and be able to do something to stop the buildings from

crumbling, this new society from dismantling.

5.1.7 Reconstructing meaning

The second account in which the story of Kianda is important is in the way in which it is told. It is

not told in the neorrealist narrative fashion. It is written so as to emulate an ancient storytelling mode. This mode, however, has become alien to the new generation of Angolans. This ancient narrative form, this ancient text, would have to be rediscovered, reinterpreted in order to become meaningful. This subtext of the story of Kianda clearly indicates the importance of semiotics, of the world of signs, of the world of language. It is only through this exercise, of deciphering the various layers of meaning, of understanding the mythic symbolism that undelies the people’s imaginary, that reality can actually take shape and eventually be interpreted. Linda Hutcheon calls attention to the fact that the production of meaning comes either through intertextuality. that is. through the interrelationship of various texts, or through the palimpsest, that is, through the deciphering of the layers of meaning and the dialogue of various voices and texts, or still, from the absence of words, which are also of significant importance inasmuch as they also tell something about reality. Thus, what the narrator in O Desejo Je Kianda suggests is precisely this:

Kianda's text has to be reconstituted and the absent word has to be fdled in says the old Kalumbo.

Kalumbo realizes that Kianda’s desire reveals a language game, a riddle that needs to be figured out.

At this point one gets to what seems to be at the core of postmodern as well as Real Maraviiloso narratives. The Real Maravilloso is the language through which the alienated subject can regain selfconsciousness. It is moreover, the language through which he decentralizes the hegemonic discourse and reterritorializes his own voice. The mythic narrative will allow that. This is the narrative language through which the new Angolan man might again get in touch with his roots. Before colonization, before these cultures became graphic, this postmodem science of semiotics - of figuring out hidden meanings and

198 figurative language, the power of the word, of the oral word - was a science they used to master with

excellence. The language of multiple meanings, the language of riddles, the language of proverbs, of

symbols, of metaphors, of metonyms. was the language spoken by these native communities. The language

games - which one now considers to be postmodern - can be said to have been in practice in pre-modem

Africa. It is a postmodernism avant la lettre. This is the language which now Pepetela and Agualusa are

trying to recover, to bring back into the narrative and. for that matter, into the everyday life of the new

Angolan man which lost touch with his primordial soul. The rediscovery of this language will be

autochthonous trait of the Angolan Cathedral; that is what is going to make the Angolan Cathedral more

truthful to its own soul and spirit and less a false emulation of the European Enlightenment myth. As

Carpentier stated in his article on the baroque, examined in Chapter Two of this study, each nation has to

find its own way of filling the blank surfaces of the neoclassical and Enlightenment architecture. In the

case of the Angolan narrative, these empty surfaces, these unrepresented spaces will be filled with features

of Angolan own culture, that is. with its myths, its stories, its linguistic traditions.

5.2 The Lusophone African novelist José Eduardo Agualusa

Unlike the other two writers in this study, namely Manuel Scorza and Artur Mauricio Pestana.

José Eduardo Agualusa's contribution to literature has yet to be discovered and appreciated within, but mostly without, the Luso-Afncan Literary world. With the exception of Ana Mafalda Leite's chapter on

Angolan Literature within the book Post Colonial Literature o f Lusophone .Africa, which includes a brief study on Agualusa's first novel, and Pires Laranjeira's De Letra em Riste. which also comments on

Agualusa’s first novel, very little else has. in fact, been written about this novelist of the new generation of

Luso-African writers. Despite his young age - he was bom in Huambo. Angola, in 1960 - and the fact that

Agualusa actually studied to become an agricultural engineer in the Institute Superior de Agronomia in

Lisbon, this member of the Union of Angolan writers has a very prolific literary career and performs a very

199 active role as a propagator of the Angolan Portuguese and Angolan culture. According to the latest update on his biography found in the internet -http://www.terravista. pt/BaiaGatas/ 1095/ pages2.html- on March

10. 1998. he currently contributes twice a month to the newspaper Pûblico. by writing cronicas/ He also writes monthly cronicas for the magazine Pais e Filhos and leads a radio program - .-1 Hora das Cigarras - on African music and poetry, which is broadcast on Sundays at Antena I and RDP Africa. More important though is the fact that, aside from his journalistic endeavors, within the period of the last ten years, he also published four novels - A Conjura (1989), A Feira dos Assombrados ( 1992). Estaçâo das Chuvas ( 1996) and Naçào Crioula ( 1997): a collection of short stories entlitled D. Nicolau Agua-Rosada e outras estôrias verdadeiras e inverosimeis ( 1990); a book of poems Coraçâo dos Bosques ( 1991 ), the only one of his books to have been published in Angola, unfortunately; and a kind of documentary on the African community in Lisbon, entitled Lisboa Africana. written in conjunction with the journalist Fernando

Semedo and the photographer Elza Rocha. (1993/1998).

Despite the fact, however, that Agualusa has not yet received worldwide recognition and that up to the present moment no literary critic has devoted an in-depth study on his novels, short stories and poems. Pires Laranjeira states that he is perhaps the most relevant and innovative writer in the novelistic

" The Cronicas is a very typical journalistic kind of writing, small and humorous short story, which usually comments on episodes of daily life or on events that have serve as political, social or cultural commentary. It certainly is not easy to write cronicas because with very few and keen words the author has to be able to raise the reader's awareness about specific contemporary topics of general interest. In one of Agualusa's cronicas, for instance, he discusses, as its title suggests - "A propos de la lusophonie" - the question of the use of the Portuguese language. He makes fun of the Portuguese who, when in France, at a Conference, speak only French, to show off, while the Lusophone Africans, always having been taught to respect and love the Portuguese language, use Portuguese instead. So. the ex-colonizee should continue taking pride on speaking Portuguese, a European language, whereas the Portuguese, for whom their mother tongue is nothing new. speaking a European language with a higher status, such as French, is a sign of civility and erudition. This is the tone of Agualusa's commentary: "Nos. em Africa, na nossa bruta ignorância, insistimos em falar a lingua de Camôes. a par com outras ainda mais selvagens e misteriosas. E é em conseqüéncia deste lamentavel barbarismo que o português continua a ser falado nas instituiçôes intemacionais e congresses sobre lusofonia." [ ] Lusôfonos. sim lusôfonos sempre. De preferéncia em fiancés, que é uma lingua mais civilizada. mas lusôfonos." (http://www.ciberduvidas.com/antologia/agualusa.html)

200 genre in the Lusophone African world from the 1980s onwards. In this article Laranjeira contends that

Agualusa was able to overcome, already in his first novel, the

lacunas da experiência através da investigaçâo, realizando um enredo socio-politico e cultural muito atractivo. em linguagem incisiva e lapidar. com grande sensibilidade e perspiccia no aproveitamento da fluencia oral da lingua portuguesa que se fala em Portugal e em Angola, todavia nào levando ao exagero a ductilidade expressiva, antes mantendo-a nos limites vigiados de uma estética da clareza e da ironia formativa. (101)

Like Pepetela, Agualusa attempts to tell a story in "discurso proximo do português standard, compreensivel em qualquer canto do mundo. " (101) But more so than Pepetela, Agualusa’s narratives underscore the importance of the spoken word, the oral tradition, the welter of proverbs, riddles and images that are part of the African imaginary and every-day language. Because words of the vernacular languages and of typical Angolan Portuguese are used, his novels almost always include a glossary at the end.

5.2.1 From Imperfect Chapels to Temples of Miracle

The fact that post-colonial writers little by little tear down the walls of the modem European cathedral, that is, that they deconstruct the modem European nation-building myth, entails not only a subversion of the narrative form but also a change, a growth and a certain maturation in terms of ideals, both socio-political and economical ideals, as well as literary ideals. Although Agualusa continues feeding the tradition of rupture, for he ultimately also wishes to be able to envision a modem nation that can fully develop and progress, that is. that one day Angola will become truly independent not just politically but also socio-economically. and be able to recover from the bureaucratic, administrative as well as cultural wounds caused by colonization, it is noticeable that he no longer shares with the generation before him this westemized modem myth and or the means through which the modem national ideal could be accomplished. Agualusa's posture in relation to the nation of Angola is. compared to Pepetela, or at least to

Petetela's first novels, less imbued with that revolutionary commitment and with the faith that a socialist govemmenL allied with the raising of the collectivety’s political awareness, may enable Angola to grow

201 healthfully and steadily develop into a modem nation. In Agualusa's novels one does not sense the

presence of that underlying ideal of a perfect Modem Cathedral that would eventually be built. In Estaçâo

das Chuvas, his third novel, he focuses mainly on the thirty year long period of war - colonial war followed

by civil wars, which devastated the country, leaving it in mins. At one point in the aforementioned novel

the writer Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, whose life the narrator is trying to re-trace (in 1992 she suddenly

disappears when Savimbi breaks the peace treaty and after elections, starts civil war again) asks the

following question: "Que pais é esse?" Her question alludes to the fact that the free nation the liberationists

had fought to liberate, and envisioned as utopia, is not within sight. The country hey see before them is not

recognizable; it is not the Angola they dreamed of. The answer to Lidia's question seems to come on the

last page, when the narrator, in a conversation with a different character, namely Joaoquinzinho. says the

following about "this country":

A cidade apodrecendo sem remédio. Os prédios com as entranhas devastadas. Os càes a comer mortos. Os homens a comer os càes e os excrementos dos càes. Os loucos com o corpo coberto de alcatrâo. Os mutilados de olhar perdido. Os soldados em pânico no meio dos escombros. E mais além as aldeias desertas. as lavras calcinadas. as turvas multidôes de foragidos. E ainda mais além a natureza transtomada. o fbgo devorando os horizontes. Disse: - Este pais morreu! (279)

If this affirmation, that Angola had died, came from a Portuguese, it would be comprehensible. The

Portuguese, after all. could claim that the country would be better off if it were still under the metropolitan rule. But when this statement comes from someone who has participated in the liberationist movement, it has an even stronger impact on the reader. It signals the disillusionment of the intelligentsia and the people alike. This statement possibly reflects the authorial voice of Agualusa. his perception of present-day reality

in Angola. Joàoquinzinho's description of Angola signal the death of faith and hope and. more significantly, the acceptance of failure.

In Agualusa's novels there is a complete absence of those totalizing models, of recipes, of political and cultural agendas, of metanarratives, in other words, which were believed to lead a country to the

202 achievement of its nationalistic goals. Moreover, his narratives are not structured upon the so-called

modem binary model in the sense that he does not convey the possibility that one defective national model,

the European model, for instance, could be substituted by another one that would be more suitable for the

Angolan reality. The reader does not sense, between the lines, that Agualusa is trying to convey the belief

that a socialist kind of government will be more suitable for Angola than a capitalist one. for instance. All

the dichotomies which seem to permeate the thought or the aspirations of the first generation of post-

independent writers like Pepetela do not seem to be part of Agualusa's way of perceiving current Angolan

reality, and the relation of Angola with the rest of the world. Perhaps Agualusa does not rationalize is those terms because he was not. as Pepetela. a participant of the revolutionary movement, and. for that matter, is not an immediate product of revolutionary action during the post-Independence phase. This, perhaps, explains Agualusa's lack of that utopian idealism which characterized the intelligentsia and the politically active population that participated in the guerrilla and liberation movements and took over government after the liberation. He saw that instead of being able to build a modem cathedral, as they had envisioned, all these freedom fighters were able to do was build imperfect chapels, as Pepetela. from hindsight, was able to recognize. In fact, this is what Agualusa reiterates in Estaçâo das Chuvas: that Angola has become this imperfect chapel, or even less than an imperfect chapel, it has become the locus of power struggle, of civil wars, of opportunism, in which only survived those who sold out. who gave up their principles and made alliances with either the Russian or the American imperialist machine. The new socialist govemment. which supposedly should be attempting to transform Angola into a modem nation, had had to embark in a fight for the survival of the fittest. In addition, one should not forget that, by this time, the First World was already reaching a postcapitalist and postindustrialist phase. This indubitably hindered even more brutally the possibility/ of development of underdeveloped third-world countries, such as Angola, especially if they did not align with capitalist ideology.

203 It is therefore understandable that Agualusa. in his novels, actually conveys that same lack of faith in specific ideologies, in governmental policies, in leftist or rightist movements, identified as being typically postmodern. Postmodern in the sense discussed by Linda Hutcheon and e.xamined in the first chapter of this study. The fact that he no longer believes in the power of metanarratives, of truths, of collective myths, is probably what made him learn to interpret reality as power and language games; a reality constituted mainly of relative, mutant and ephemeral relationships. Because of this, he does not seem to want to nourish the myth, or the illusion, of single and perfect realities, of perfect cathedrals. His novels will therefore usually center on historical or fictional events that revolve around socio-political and cultural contexts of a local or regional sphere without attempting to necessarily make them serve as allegories for the national as a whole. In regards to novelistic themes, some of his novels will raise issues of universal value, like the short stories in the book D. Nicolau.... This book is divided in three parts, the first one about stories that "really happened.” but which the reader soon realizes as actually very incredible in content; the second part on stories about "anthropomorfism.” and the third part, which is about "exercises of imagination.” For the most part. Agualusa's stories will raise issues that have only local or regional magnitude, focusing on the heterogeneity and particularity of problems faced by specific communities, thus downplaying the significance of homogenizing discourses and the power of national myths and metanarratives. Therefore, instead of focusing on countering the official history by an alternative, but equally monolithic narrative. Agualusa will focus on little narratives, on the construction, in other words, of little Temples of Miracle, which offer no models, paradigms or promises of national or universal significance. In fact, like Pepetela in Geraçào da Utopia, he. in Estaao das Chuvas. also ends up showing that the only faith and hope one can still hold on to. as citizens of this new postmodern order, is that fabricated in the various postindustrialist businesses. In the name of religion entrepreneurs build Temples of Miracle - which in return for money - promise to deliver magic solutions, instant gratification, ephemeral illusions to the "lost and skeptic” postmodern individual. Just like in Geraçào da Utopia, where

204 the temple of Ominus was created to sell miracles and forge instant dreams, in Estaçâo das Chuvas we encounter legendary and mythic figures of the fight for independence engaged in the profitable business of selling faith:

-Montei um negocio com o pro feta. na verdade eram v arios neg ocios. nem todos muito claros. Por um lado haviam fundado uma seita. a Igreja do Cristo Negro Redentor. Sexta-feira a tarde reuniam-se para rezar e cantar. Ao s abado fazima milagres: Grandes milagres - garantiu Ninganessa com voz grave. - Coisas de muita maravilha e inspiraçâo. (274)

One can see that there has indeed been a change in perspective, a metamorphosis in the way writers perceive the evolution and the progression of their nations. They move from the envisioning of modem cathedrals to imperfect chapels, and from imperfect chapels to temples of miracle. This is what the poem below, by Lidia do Carmo Ferreira, and transcribed by Agualusa into the novel A Conjura conveys:

[...] Vi entao Angola das vascas d’agonia erguer-se esplendorosa à luz de um novo dia.

reinava a harmonia; o sol da igualdade ia de luz inundava a livre humanidade.

E que belo deve ser para o peito angolano ver vingar o Direito e a queda do tirano?

tudo isto antevia no sonho fabuloso envolto num clarâo. etéreo. luminoso.

Porém quando acordei a negra realidade mostrou-se bem crua: nula era a igualdade utopia o Direito e zero a Liberdade! [...] (17)

In an almost patriotic tone, it talks about this sublime dream of Angola arising from the darkness into the dawn of a new day. It envisions how beautiful it may be for the breast of the Angolan citizen to overthrow the tyrants of colonization. But the lyrical persona wakes up to the dark reality, which shows itself starkly before him/her: "nula era a igualdade/utopia o Direito e zero a Liberdade" (null is equality, utopia is the

Right and zero is Liberty!).

205 If one recalls the novels by Scorza and Pepetela - both committed to writing novels that questioned the national bourgeoisie's ideology - they exposed the plight of the indigenous populations who had no access to power and who were submitted to new forms of colonization and exploitation. They criticized the national bourgeoisie which, supposedly, would head the new governments by committing to the people and to the optimal development of their nations. The way these writers problematized the vast realm of socio-political and cultural injustices was by always wanting to deconstruct the hegemonic discourse and proposing an alternative solution. These writers have based their discourse and their actions on Marxist theory and praxis, and have hoped to influence their readers so as to believe that the Marxist

Utopia was a more suitable a solution for their national problems.

In Chapters 3 and 4 it was also demonstrated that eventually Scorza and Pepetela changed their perspectives and began to question their own role as writers and intellectuals who supposedly "led" the marginalized and oppressed majority from aconciencia vencida to a conciencia mitica all the way to a conciencia histôrica. In his last novel. La dan~a inmovil. Scorza shows indubitable signs of his own disillusionment with the leftist model he had so vehemently defended; he shows the corruption of Peru's contemporary reality, even in relation to the leftist intellectuals and politicians upon which his discourse had strongly relied. He also shows his disillusionment with the power of literature, of his own writing, as a means of transformation. The same is true for Pepetela's two last novels. In .4 Geracao da Utopia, he actually is able to recognize that even those intellectualls and guerrilla fighters who struggled to free

Angola from the chains of Portuguese colonialism ended up repeating some of the same patterns of oppression committed by their Portuguese counterparts. Like Scorza. Pepetela realized that power corrupts, that not only politics and economics, but also class and racial relations will be determined and dictated by the strength of the ideology of those in power. In other words, in their latest novels one perceives that their thought underwent a metamorphosis, changing from Utopia to Dystopia. So much so. that inO Desejo de

Kianda, Pepetela does exactly that which Agualusa does right from his first novel. Therefore, it is safe to

206 say that Agualusa picks up exactly at the point where Scorza and Pepetela left off. That is. Agualusa's writing will, in literary and ideological terms, dwell on and push forward the themes and the approach of these writers’ latter stage. Agualusa does not bring forth the nation-building myth, which Scorza and

Pepetela entertained and problematized in their first "evolutionary" stage. Not only does Agualusa discard the dream of a perfect Modem Cathedral but he also demythicizes some of the new national mvths. He starts off accepting, perhaps, the fact that all a writer can do. within the present context, is to reflect on the imperfections of the chapel and learn how to accept the fact that the chapels contemporary man envisions are and always will be imperfect. Why should writers continue to entertain the image of Angola as a free country, a country that will rise up from the ashes and eventually solve its internal and external socio political problems if. ever since independence, all people have wimessed is a succession of civil wars, a procession of corrupt leaders, a defective administrative machine, inadequate utility services (water, electricity, etc.) and the involvement of civil servants in black market and smuggling schemes?

5.2.2 Representing the unrepresentable

In A Conjura Agualusa, through the voice of one of the main characters. Severino, the one who is a founder member of the liberationist movement - makes explicit what he thinks the role of literature is. and specifically what the Angolan novel should deal with;

O que era preciso era fotografar a realidade. Mas nâo esquecendo nunca que a realidade angolana era composta de uma grande dose de surrealidade. Nào bastava descrever com maior ou menor rigor os usos e costumes, os ambientes. os tipos, os vicios ou as crenças. Era preciso antes do mais captar a alma do povo. Compreender as pessoas: - Nos, angolenses, vivemos mergulhados num imiverso mdgico. Muitos. como o Cordeiro da Matta. acham nisto uma grande desgraça. Outros, desdenham das crenças e superstiçôes do povo. Mas todos, mesmo quando afirmam o contrario, temem o poder dos calundus. Eu penso que a força e a originalidade de um genuino romance angolano so se poderâ conseguir através da sâbia mistura entre o imaginârio e a realidade. Porque é assim que nos somos. (116, emphasis added)

Submitting less than Scorza and Pepetela. in their initial phase, to the limits or constrictions of the traditional realist and neorrealist novel with a strong political an combative overtone, and being perhaps

207 more a product of a postmodern Weltanschauung, Agualusa will apparently be less committed, less politicized, and less worried about representing a specific given historical reality. He will weave into the narrative aspects that are clearly of the postmodern aesthetic of the sublime: first of all, he will allow the hidden magic and the extraordinary aspects of reality to surface: secondly, he will blur the limits between the concrete reality and the unrepresented imaginary world: moreover, he will parody history through the collage of various, and sometimes contradicting, historical documents: he allows room for the intertextuality of literary and non-literary texts as well as for the intertextuality of historical and fictional characters. In order to capture the real soul of the Angolan individual, as the quote above contends, writers will have to help rescue the ancient African soul that was repressed. Through riddles, proverbs and stories from the traditional lore this lost soul might be brought back into life, just as the spirit of Kianda. All of this lost welter of tradition has to be rekindled because it returns to the people their suffocated voice. The riddles, the proverbs and the stories from a pre-modem period are the voices of othemess. of plurality, which will help the new Angolan man reconfigure meaning and make sense out of his present reality. And

Agualusa undoubtedly does that. He counters the metanarrative discourse which actually attempts to erase the differences, the plural and simultaneous worlds that cohabit reality. Abrindo brechas de fantasia e transmitindo a algumas personagens certos delirios mdgicos. o autor liberta-se da responsabilidade de fidelidade ao real empirico que um leitor menos avisado Ihe possa exigir. Alias, a massa dos leitores espera isso mesmo do romance do realismo magico; que os faça conviver com as figuras histôricas. lembrando-

Ihes, de vez em quando, por um passe de mâgica, através do fantâstico e do maravilhoso. que. na realidade, pode nâo ter sido bem assim.( 102)

In Feira dos Assobrados, his second novel, Agualusa does exactly what Severino. the character in

A Conjura says writers, especifically Angolan writers, should do. He attempts to rescue the Angolan soul, to represent the unrepresentable reality; he dives into the magic world of Angola and rescues the "strength and originality of the genuine Angolan novel through the wise mixture between the imaginary and reality"

208 (116). In fact, just like the narrator says, what he witnessed was a succession of fantastic stories, "a cortejo de prodfgios."

First of all, it is much shorter than a usual novel, it could almost be characterized as a very long short-story, a novella, or even, as a fable, like Pepetela's latest novel O Desejo de Kianda. which likewise abandons the traditional novelistic genre. And even though the author conserves the traditional structure of a novel, with its first person narrator observing and participating in the events of the village from behind the counter of his store, the sub-plot stories he tells us can also be read as independent stories that originate from the oral tradition. By using the first person plural, saying that "we" - meaning the people of the village of Dondo, did this or that, and so forth, he approximates the narrative from the testimonial accounts which, from our contemporary literary point of view, are considered to give more strength to decentralized forms of discourse, because it is no longer a writer from the outside narrating events and giving voice to the people, but the people themselves making their voices being heard.

A Feira dos Assombrados, as was stated earlier, can be read as a succession of fantastic tales; however, it can also be read intertextually with A Conjura.* Certain things acquire a more specific historical significance when read in conjuction with the latter. For instance: Even though the narrator o f A

Feira keeps his identity concealed (his identity is not important, he is after all speaking for the people), if one has read A Conjura, one soon learns that he is the cousin of Severino de Souza, one of the main characters of .4 Conjura, one of the youngsters who, together with Paixào Franco and his friend Adolfo, organizes the liberation movement in Luanda in the 1880s. If one has read the first novel, it immediately comes to mind that Severino. in order to recruite more people to join the movement and help fight the colonial armed forces, frequently undertook trips to the interior. As one reads A Feira dos Assombrados.

^This is also true for his third novel, Estaçâo das Chuvas, which also brings to life characters that had appeared in his first novelA Conjura. The fact that these characters reappear in the subsequent novels indicates that the author is perhaps trying to establish a dialogic relationship between them. They inform one another intertextually.

209 one realizes that this remote and forgotten village is one of these places. From this, one concludes that the wondrous and fantastic phenomena that happen in that forsaken village are actually taking place concomitantly to the events and stories narrated in the urban setting of Luanda in A Conjura. These are practically two parallel stories, but the worlds portrayed in each are so totally different, that it does not seem to be stories taking place at the same time, in the same overseas colony. On the one hand, in .A

Conjura, we are presented with the modernizing and lively environment of the cafés, the balls, carnival, the commerce and businesses of an emerging bourgeoisie, the relentless progress and the life in the capital of a colony that is striving to become an independent nation, and. on the other hand, in Feira dos

Assombrados. we seem to be transported to a remote and timeless place, which apparently had been kept untouched by "civilization." with hardly any contact with the capital, where people went about their problems, as if there were no other world than their own. Soon into the narrative, however, one learns that this forgotten village had experienced its glory during the first decades of colonization. Located on the margins of the Kwanza River, it had prospered from its busy slave trade and its rich markets, which offered goods from Northern Africa as well as from other places in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, after the advent of the railroad, it had literally been abandoned. Its market, its commercial activities and the headquarters of the administrative system had been moved to another village where the railroad passed. Therefore, it is no wonder that it was Severino, who had come all the way from Luanda, who. surprised at what he finds there, refers to the Dondo village as .4 Feira dos Assombrados. a haunted village, apparently inhabited only by the spirit of those who once really did live there. But the bizarre events that started occurring right around the time of Severino's visit awaken the villagers from their torpor. And it is precisely with the recounting of these events that the narrator starts .A Feira dos Assombrados.

Ironically, what brings life back to the village of Dondo is death. The narrator starts by affirming that the first body they found still seemed human. This suggests that it was not only one body the villagers found on the margins of the river but also that the other bodies found were already in an advanced stage of

210 decay. And this is in fact what happened. When they found the first body, the villagers decide to bury it according to certain rituals. This is when the reader realizes that the villagers did have previous contact with civilization, with Judeo-Christian traditions, which they intermingled with their own. First, they decide to baptize the recently-found creature as Lazarus, to make sure his soul would find its way to heaven; then they proceed with the burial ritual, which had to be celebrated with music and dance and speeches that praised the qualities and virtues of the deceased. The fact that the deceased was unknown to all villages, did not prevent them from paying him a eulogy. Quipangala. the teacher, and the best one in the village when it came to mastering the use of words, "criou para Lazaro uma vida novinha em folha. prodiga em devoçôes e em virtudes. Alongou-se em metaforas de inusitado brilho. falando do defunto como de um amigo de infância. recordando-nos a sua meninice ingenua, o mancebo grave e belo que ele havia sido. Ouvindo-o falar choramos com ele Igrimas autênticas. jâ Lazaro se fazia parente de todos. jâ com a sua morte se extinguia irremissivelmente algo de nos." (p. 12)

Before one continues with the story, is worth opening a parenthesis. In this episode we again notice the dim limits between reality and fiction. Quipangala's words were so powerful that the villagers began to feel that his death would signify an irreparable loss. It is also important to mention that what

Agualusa accomplished here is not simply the effect of an incredible, fantastic and amusing episode.

Significant is the fact that Agualusa brings to the fore an important aspect of African cultures: the love for oratory, the worth and the value of good speech, the pride people take in being exceptional storviellers. It underscores the significance of the traditional ritual of storytelling which, under the colonization period, was considered to be the feature that characterized agraphic. illiterate and underdeveloped peoples. Peoples who had the love for storytelling were, supposedly, the peoples who had not yet evolved sufficiently so as to have their own writing system.

Returning to the story, as more and more dead bodies would surface on the margins of the

Kwanza, people started to feel uneasy. They had no idea where they were coming from and why they were

211 so mutilated and in such advanced stage of decomposition, as if they were not human. The Catholic priest. the only republican priest the narrator had ever met. and republican meant that he was liberal and progressive, and defended republican ideas in Portugal, had no explanation for all these deaths. The village chief counselor also did not know how to explain this phenomenon nor what to do with all the corpses.

Thus, it did not take long for the whole village to consult the sorcerer for an explanation. Either that, or they would come up with their own hypotheses:

Para Angelina, os afogados eram quiandas adormecidas. pressagios de enorme desgraça. Jà na beata opiniâo de nga XLxiqiuinha-ria-Cachongo eram, isso sim. anjos anunciadores. mensageiros do apocalipse. No que o major concordava, discordando: anjos seriam e anunciadores também. mas talvez ate exterminadores, mas haviam chegado ao Dondo atrasados de muitos dias. " O mundo acabou faz tempo", dizia, mas os anjos morreram todos antes de chegarem aqui.' (41 )

For most of the villagers it really seemed like this was the sign of the end of the world. Things did not make sense anymore. Extraordinary events started to happen. The world was out of its natural order. nature was rebelling against the villagers, the floods, which uprooted houses that floated down the streets almost intact, were enough reason not to ignore "a delirante multiplicaçào desses sinais':

eram os filhos que se voltavam contra os pais, as esposas contra os maridos. os pobres contra os ricos e vice-versa; eram os homens que se tinham posto a voar, imitando os passaros. e a navegar por debaixo das aguas, e a profanar montanhas. florestas e desertos. e capturar em maquinas complexas as forças da natureza. e a domesticar essas forças. (41 )

This passage reminds us of Faust, who in his attempts at modernization attempted to tame nature, to control it, and use it for his own interests. At the moment Faust indeed controlled it, nature rebelled against him and his selfishness. The context in this novel is similar. The chaos was apparent, the apocalypse had arrived, there was no way they could control the force of the waters, of the flooding, and more and more corpses were found floating by the river. Due to the number of dead, however, it had become impossible to bury all of them with the same dedication and according to the same ritual with which they buried "Lazaro.” The priest, saying that these "creatures"’ which no longer looked human, refused to bury them according to the Catholic tradition. The leader of the council, worried about the

212 stench and the hygienic conditions, insisted that it was necessary to bury them right away. The population

started to bum gun-powder down the streets, and sandalwood and cedar inside their house to make the

smell bearable. Chaos was taking over the town. With these two opposing views, the village soon became

divided, some people agreeing with the priest, others with the "mayor." This lead to intrigue, arguments

and fights. Each camp tried to solicit people to see matters form their own perspective. And the narrator,

who would see all of this from behind the counter of his store, had to serve as an intermediator. And what

is more incredible, the narrator would receive messages from people in the one camp and in the other, through Bernardo, a goat that behaved like a human being, which acted as the village courier.

By fictionalizing stories and rituals such as the ones described above, it becomes clear that

Agualusa, in this novel, has chosen to capitalize on little narratives, on the portrayal of events which have local or regional significance, rather than on facts and occurrences that would allegorize an idealized modem national ethos, that is, stories of national significance that would portray the conduct of exemplary characters, with exemplary morals, positive political engagement. Unlike in the foundational narratives in

Latin America, where the characters’ behavior and manners should be nationally dignified, shared and pursued, Agualusa focuses on the life of the villagers whose existence is unknown anywhere else. Instead of resorting to foundational narratives or metanarratives which aim to attain mythic importance. Agualusa concentrates on the simplicity and the uniqueness of experiences that do not necessarily convey national and universal aspirations, and he probably does so because, as was explained earlier. Agualusa's thought is more influenced by a postmodern worldview than by a modem view per se. Since the future of a nation is. within this postmodem age. less determined by the efforts of its national bourgeoisie, by class stmggles or by the political activity of leftist parties and minority groups, than it is by the interest and the power of national and transnational corporations, which impose their will through economic and political sanctions and allow or prohibit certain measures to be taken by national and regional governments, Agualusa does not even seem to invest on a discourse that will tackle this problematic. In A Feira dos Assombrados. he re-

21: enacts the life of the people in a village that had experienced little (or only the negative aspects) of

Modernity. Therefore he concentrates on fictionalizing the way the villagers deal with their immediate problems, portraying the values, principles and means with which they go about their lives. Agualusa concentrates on showing the reader how a specific community, no matter how backward, primitive or rudimentary it appears to be, goes on with its life, regardless of world politics, global economy and postindustrial development.

If one recalls John Beverly's Against Literature, or even the previously examined book by Linda

Hutcheon on The Poetics o f Postmodernism, most of the contemportuy authors have preferred to give up the grand canonical narratives, and experiment with the narrative and linguistic forms that are typical of the community they are portraying. Agualusa does exactly that. He utilizes their language - the villagers speak a broken Portuguese mixed with the vernacular, because Portuguese does not even have words to express certain concepts and phenomena; he uses their symbolism, their imagery and their belief system to create a narrative that will be truthful to the way they give meaning to things. The language, and the way they express themselves, is, in the case of these villagers, seminal to their understanding of the world. For a people who, for instance, believes in the power of a sorcerer and of individuals who have the power to communicate with ancestor or non-terenial forces, it is not at all difficult to believe in the stories Joào

Maria Viera de Carvalho used to tell the villagers. The narrator tells us that this cobbler lived his life tormented by the keenness of his five senses. He had a gift to foresee and to see through things. The villagers used to say that he shared little or nothing of his personal life with the community because whatever he had to say- to reveal - was usually related to an external nature. That is why he could speak in languages that were foreign to him. He spoke in the language of nature, expressing the voice of nature and objects. In A Feira dos Assombrados. no matter how implausible and extraordinary the events occurring might have seemed to an outsider, he made people understand what they meant. Because of his special powers, he had credibility. One day, as the narrator contends, this cobbler showed up with a blue egg, a

214 heavenly blue, and explained that this egg was the egg of an angel, and that the wings of angel are not made of feathers, as those of birds, but rather of "glabas," transparent wings, like those of ordinary flies

(16). Why would the villagers mistrust the words of a person who had special powers, who was able to communicate with a world they couldn't see? Why would they mistrust a person who, in various different moments, "vaticinava desgraças e prodigios"? In fact, as the narrator contends, the power of the word, in this village, is stronger than action itself; "entre nos o mujimbu sempre foi mais poderoso que a verdade.

Ele faz acontecer; dâ acontecéncia ao insucedido." (51 )

5.2.3 Parody and Metafiction

Thus, even when Agualusa, like Pepetela, engages in the task of re-writing history, he parodies history and attempts to demythicize history's supposed rigor in documenting, recording and interpreting a given reality and its specific facts. From the new historicist point of view, however, he does not want to re write history so as to make right what is wrong, that is. re-write, that which was written from a reactionary and hegemonic perspective, as if this one were to substitute, or altogether eliminate the previous one. He only wants to present another possible version, one among many readings of history, one among many possible ways of interpreting a given reality. He does not aspire to present a better or more truthful version of past events which could possibly enlighten the present subject and reality. He does not believe in modem national myths that will help people rethink and redirect future national goals. In Ana Mafalda

Leite's words, Agualusa's attempt at refictionalizing the past is "to give the reader a sense of the counter- factual side of history, of what might have been"* without, however, wanting to bring forth one solid counterdiscourse (see Postmodem Textual Collage, point 5.25).

In A Conjura, for which Agualusa was awarded the Prêmio Revelaçào Sonangol 1989, for instance, he reenacts a controversial episode - and even period - of Angola's history, which had never

Ana Mafalda Leite, "Angola", in Post Colonial Literature o f Lusophone Africa.

215 really been probiematized in a literary form: the death, by poisoning, of the journalist Pedro Paixào Franco who helped formed one of the first underground liberation movements in Angola, in the late 1800s. The story takes place in the city of Sao Paulo da Assunçâo de Luanda (that was the capital’s name during the colonial period), and encompasses the period of three decades, from about the time when the Conference of

Berlin takes place in the 1880s, to 1911, when the independence movement - led by Severino and Paixào

Franco - attempts but fails to overthrow the colonial government due to the fact that one of its members betrays the cause and leaks information to the colonial armed forces. Official versions of this historical event have documented and studied the death of this Journalist, but they have apparently been buried and forgotten because of the controversy around the journalist's death. In A Conjura Agualusa resurfaces this episode of Angolan history paying his tributes to the courageous acts of this journalist and of the other members of the underground independist movement; but he does so not with the intent of settling the doubts about Franco's death or making justice toward this journalist by presenting the reader with one correct or more acceptable version. For Laranjeira, Agualusa’s approach to history is simply meant to demonstrate that "a historia do nacionalismo angolano pode ser ficcionada, submetida a imperativos imaginarios, dai decorrendo para o leitor a inderterminaçâo do real, configurado de modo arbitrârio" (102).

The willingness to underscore the inderterminacy of historical events, and to expose the arbitrariness on the part of historians, chroniclers, writers, when they opt to transcribe historical events from one or another perspective, is, in fact, characteristic o f postmodern writing. And it is precisely because Agualusa wants to avoid incurring in the same arbitrariness, as he re-writes this particular event of Angolan history, that he has to resort to magic, to inderterminacy, to fabulation and parody, blurring the limits between m\thic and historical realities. In fact, the reader, at the end of the novel, does not seem more enlightened about what really occurred at the end of that particular massacre; the reader does not learn how Paixào Franco really died. In fact, the reader learns about one of the possible ways Paixào Franco may have died, in the event when he is requested to examine a shipment of the copies of a book he had written, entitled Historia de

216 Uma Traiçâo. When he meets the business woman who had summoned him to see the shipment, he finds out that she knows nothing about the books. She, however, lures him into a private room in her office and seduces him with drinks. We learn that on his way home he is already feeling sick, and that he might have been poisoned by the drinks. In the hospital one finds out that the probable cause of his death, according to the doctor’s official record, was actually pneumonia. But one hears a voice of doubt in Severino, when he asked the doctor if the suspicion of poisoning was confirmed. The doctor answered: "Poisoning? Your friend was a victim of pneumonia." The reader is left wondering was really caused his death. But the coincidence is evident. Paixào Franco writes a book about betrayal, and, like other members of the movement, suddenly dies on the day they are going to overthrow the government. The blurring of realities here, that is, the book about betrayal and the reality of betrayal within Agualusa's story, invoke the title A

Conjura, for there were really unknown forces conjuring up against the liberation movement. During the whole novel, the reader is presented with signs of a conjure. These signs, however, were difficult to be interpreted. In the novel, the only person capable of interpreting them was Severino, because, having always been closely related to Vavo Ungala, the sorcerer, and being convinced of the existence of an invisible world which the ordinary human being was incapable of perceiving, took such strange signs very seriously. One of these signs was announced by his own daughter, Maria da Anunciaçào (literally Mary of the Annunciation), who, one morning, woke up reciting the following riddle:

Hâ um olho em cada pedra Uma pedra em cada olhar Um pedreiro à tua espreita Que te hâ de apredrejar

The hints were all there: eyes watching in every stone, a stone in every eye, and someone ready to throw the stone. The reader is later presented with the information that one of the members of the liberation movement was actually from Kuribeka. But the strongest irony within this whole episode is not the fact that something was conjured up against them in their attempt to overthrow the government. The irony lies in the fact that the members of the movement considered themselves as the conjurers who, over a period of

217 time would invisibly conjure up an invincible army of liberationist fighters that would break the spell of

colonial power. Thus, the novel is open-ended, and the reader does not know how Paixào Franco and the other members die, nor to what conjuring the title really refers to. It is up to the reader to unveil the

mystery and derive meaning from this historical event by himself.

5.2.4 The past as a mirror for the present

As contemporary readers and critics we might then ask why the author bothers to even want to recount an unsettled historical event if he is unable or unwilling to establish, with scientific rigor, the facts and the causes which led to it. According to postmodern theory, as exposed in Chapter I, the significance of re-enacting history has to do with the fact that it allows the voice of the forgotten and marginalized groups to finally be heard, but not to replace the former one with this one; instead, this new version has to be placed along with many others, and the reader, who has much more participation in the construction of meaning, will then derive his own conclusions, come up with his own discourse, his own "narrative." In other words, the re-writing of history has the ultimate objective of making the reader questions "his assumptions about history" as well as provide him with an understanding of his own contemporary

"realities." Ana Mafalda Leite puts this very clearly: "to fictionalize the past is therefore to seek to change the present. History which never was, that is fiction, projects onto the present another past - mythic, utopian or even apocalyptic - which may serve to re-examine the dark recesses of the history that we think we know" (114). This aspect of utilizing the past, that re-writing histories of the past in order to better grasp one's present reality, is part of a larger theoretical perspective also called reader-response, which will be addressed again in relation to Agualusa's novels in 5.2.5.

218 5.2.5 The textual collage

In two of his novels Agualusa deploys the narrative technique of the pastiche, of a collage of different sources of materials "patched up' together in order to create a new narrative genre. InEstaçào das

Chuvas. Agualusa transcribes segments of an interview with the poet and historian Lidia do Carmo

Ferreira, that took place on the 23 of May. 1983. in Lisbon. The author also utilizes some of her poems and segments from her diary to open some of the chapters in the novel. Almost like in a detective story, her answers to the interview questions and some of her statements contained in her dairy guide the journalist, the narrator, who is trying to understand the cause of the poet's disappearance on the eve of the day

Savimbi - the leader from LJNITA - starts the civil war again, after having lost elections against the MPLA in 1992. The reader never really learns how she disappears, but from all the journalist-narrator has gathered, it is suggested that the disappearance of crucial historical and political figures was common practice during the long-lasting periods of civil wars.

In A Conjura the textual collage is also utilized as a powerful narrative technique. Even though in this story-plot a much earlier period of history is re-enacted, history serves as the backdrop for the portrayal of the life of the creole bourgeoisie in the urban setting of Luanda in the 1800s. According to Ana

Mafalda Leite,

através deste romance, que nào tem vocaçào pedagôgica aprende-se muito acerca do universo luandense e da sociedade angolana oitocentista; aprende-se sem querer, com humor e com atençào involuntâria com que se lê uma historia bem contada. em que a curiosidade se aviva, a memôria lembra e se cruzam os trilhos da efabulaçâo e a mensagem histôrica."

Other critics agree with Mafalda Leite when she contends that Agualusa's main intent is to allow people to learn about the modus vivendi of Luandan society in the second half of the 19th century, rather than engage in a history lesson. But the way in which he accomplishes his goal is what should be underscored at this point of the discussion. Agualusa brings together and mixes within the story a diversity

*Ana Mafalda Leite, in "Jomal de Letras ", October 10, 1989. http://www.terravista.pt/ Baia Gatas/ 1095/page4.html.

219 of linguistic and literary styles, fictional and historical characters, narrative strategies and sources of

mythological, legendary and historical information which move his fiction away from the traditional

modem, realist narrative, and from the sole journalistic or historical documentation. He makes a pastiche of all these discursive forms, making it almost impossible - if it were not for the fact that his collage does center the narrative around the typical plot and sub-plot structure - to really define his novel as pertaining to one or another genre. This "pastiche" is noticeable from the very beginning of the novel. In the opening of all chapters he devotes two pages for the following: the page on the left, to present a kind of summary of what is going to be recounted/recreated in the chapter. This summary is always written in italics, in a different font, and is narrated as if told orally. These summaries always attempt to conte.xtualize the setting and the events to be narrated in its specific historical space or time, but they likewise, and in a very casual manner, hint at the fantastic and extraordinary events which the chapter will contain. By previously hinting at these extraordinary stories which will permeate the narrative, the reader, especially the western one, will not react with the expected incredulity and will actually interpret the inverosimile as part of a marvelous reality. In order to illustrate this point, let's see how the events in the first chapter are introduced: “[...] Conta-se também da confusa rixa que pelos finais de 1881 teve por pretexto as eleicoes para a càmara municipal, e dos sucessos que levaram um rico agricultor de Malangea mandar assar uma escrava para a servir aos cues" (16. emphasis added). Such information, which could sound completely absurd and fantastic, is inserted so casually in the summary that the reader takes it for what it means.

Perhaps with his curiosity raised as to how and why such a thing - as having a female slave roasted to feed the dogs - actually occurred. By the time the reader gets to the point in the story where the "roasting of the female slave” occurs, it does not take him by surprise because other, much worse incidents against the blacks of the hinterland, had been described to him. What stands out is not that this is a fantastic episode, but. rather, that the supposedly civilized Europeans actually acted more primitively and violently than the

Africans which the former considered to be barbaric and inferior.

220 The page to the right of that which is devoted to the summary of each chapter. Agualusa includes

either poems, proverbs or political excerpts from newspaper articles of that period. None of these materials

are fictional; by so doing, Agualusa presents his contemporary audience with documents or literary

creations which they might not have otherwise come across. Moreover, these materials also contribute to

the sense of veracity and realism as he reinvents that period of Angola's past.

Adding to these various strategies and experiments on the narrative level, the story itself starts, on

page eighteenth, as if it were a parable, as if told by a griot to a group of people sitting around him. all ears. to learn something about their past. The omnipresent narrator, has a voice of authority, for he has observed all events. He starts in the typical storytelling mode, establishing contact with the reader, make references to people the reader knows personally, like Vavo Uala das Ingombotas. a sorcerer, who. throughout the novel, predicts most of the events and gives advice to Severino. one of the leader of the liberation movement. Resembling myths of creation, more especifically that of Genesis, the narrative starts like this:

Dificil dizer quando tudo começou. Mas tudo começou. é claro. muito antes desse dia dezesseis de Junho de mil novecentos e onze.[...] É preciso. contudo. marcar data menos remota. Para o humilde autor deste re lato, os casos tiveram o seu berco foi mesmo nesse esquecido ano de mil oitocentos e oitenta. aquando da chegada a Luanda de um moço benguelense. de sua graça Jeronimo Caninguili. Vamos pois começar deste principio.{ 18)

This humorous beginning is direct in establishing the fact that we manipulate historical events according to our interests and/or as a way to understand our own present context. In this case, the narrator says that it is hard to say when it all started, but that he will start from a given point in history, the year in which a fellow by the name of Caninguili came to Luanda and opened his barber shop. This approach underscores the fact that history is what we make it to be. what we believe it to be. This posture in relation to history, far from wanting to substitute an official version by an alternative one - which would simply substitute the official version in order to favor the narrative of the humble, uneducated, illiterate, oppressed and marginalized groups whose history has not been told or been distorted by ideological interest - simply

221 insinuates that there is no central or dominant version, but merely versions, merely accounts of history that

we create according to our Weltanschauung and beliefs, but especially, according to our interests. This is

more in conformity with postmodern perceptions of reality, which instead of pretending to deconstruct one

form of discourse by replacing it with another, which can then also be deconstructed, and so successively

in a never ending deconstructive process, this approach shows that there is no central discourse, but only

decentralized versions competing amongst each other for space and recognition.

But the arbitrary beginning with which the narrator opts to start his account is very significant.

Caninguili's barber shop - which he named Fratemidade (how ircnic!) - soon becomes the place where men

of various different cultural, racial and political backgrounds come together and discuss. The narrator says

that a Loja de Barbeiro e Pomadas Fratemidade had been transformed in a small "club of ideas:" Os temas

I am desde as costumeiras questôes politicas e comerciais ate as artes e literaturas, passando ainda pelo desfiar dos liltimos mujimbos mundanos, sempre bem agindungados e saborosos" (p.26).

In fact, it is this space - the barber shop - which serves as the springboard for the narration o f most

fictional and non-fictional episodes of the novel. It is there where the lawyer Alfredo Trony, who also became a writer, got most of the ideas and stories for the novel he had always wanted to write about "os costumes da terra, dessa terra que Trony adoptant como sua." When he was finally able to achieve his dream of writing this novel, it is in the barbershop that people learn about it. One of Caninguili's customary clients, Mr. Marimont, who received, daily, an issue of the Di’ario da manhâ from Lisbon, had discovered that the article Nga Muturi ~ Cenas de Luanda , had been written by Trony. It is also there where the emergent crioule bourgeoisie, republicans and monarchists, rich as well as poor Portuguese, young and old, ardently discussed, defended or "trashed" articles that would either come out in the local papers or in the newspapers brought from Portugal. This is where Paixào Franco gathered raw material and arguments for the articles he wrote for a Luanda magazine, and this is also where subjects such as the massacres of the people in Huambo, Benguela and others regions, as well as subjects such as the advent of the steam engine and the installation of the railroad - which on the one hand brought progress to Angola but also hindered

the business of those who transported goods from the hinterland by boat - were lively discussed. This is

also the space in which the youngsters such as Severino and Adolfo became aware of the necessity of

forming the underground liberation movement. In other words, the barber shop became the fictional spacial

artifice that allowed Agualusa to intersperse reality and fiction in a narrative that freed the author from

"l'excessive penchant historiciste em introduisant dans le discours du narrateur la simulation de la fidélité

au réel et, dans l’action des personnages, des épisodes relevant du fantastique et du merveilleux."^

There is one episode in the novel which is very illustrative of Agualusa's ability to combine in a

novel his tendencies as a writer, essayist, and intellectual. In this one scene, a given customer of the barber

shop, the Portuguese merchant Pedro Satumino de Souza, a portugués de segunda mào, is gossiping about

Mr. Marimont, who is obviously absent. He expresses his envy in relation to Marimont saying that he is "a

rabudo. " The expression "rabudo" has many connotations. First, it is a way of referring to people of

Spanish origin. But it is also a way of saying the person is very lucky and fortunate in his entrepreneurial endeavors. As the narrator makes clear, this adjective that Satumino de Souza used, led to laughter and derogatory comments because "rabudo " means, literally, "with a tail." At this point then Alfredo Trony - one of the most educated and emdite of Caninguili's customers, the character inspired in the homonymous historical figure who actually wrote Cenas de Luanda - had to intervene and explain to the other customers that there was a legend "segundo a qual todos os nobres castelhanos nasceriam portadores de vergonhoso apéndice caudal," (p,50) This legend about the Spanish royalty having actual tails, according to Trony, had two explanations of historical origin, which he then goes on to expose. Not only does Agualusa use Trony, the intellectual, to provide the customers with an etymological justification for the term "rabudo, " he also introduces a character, another historical figure, thatconveys a scientific explanation for this phenomenon:

’This quote by the critic E. Bonavena was taken from the web page mentioned in the beginning of section 5.2 on Agualusa. Heli Châtelain. This Swiss missionary, who had accompanied Trony to the barber shop, humbly asks for permission to explain what he had read in the book Relaciôn, written by the scholar of name Pedro Martyr.

In this book. Martyr, according to the Swiss missionary, reports that there was a country, Insignamim. where people had tails, and that their tails were not as flexible as those of animals, and that because of it, they could only sit on benches that had a hole, and that whenever they wanted to sit on the ground, they first had to dig holes in which they would "encaixar as caudas.” that is, fit their tails.

With this strategy of bringing into the conversation someone who supposedly has had the opportunity to read a book that records this ethnographic or rather anthropologic curiosity. .Agualusa confers to the discussion the seriousness of scientific research. Agualusa brings together knowledge from the popular source as well as from the supposed academic source. However, it should be mentioned that the relaciôn. or travelogue - a genre frequently used by European scientists, navigators, missionaries, and the like, to "relate" what they had seen and observed in their adventurous expeditions to unknown and

"uncivilized" continents - contained information that was consciously or unconsciously distorted due to lack of ethno-cultural knowledge, eurocentrism and biased references. It is also possible that these reports were embellished by the chroniclers’ own imaginary, even though such writings were supposed to have a strictly documentary character.

By presenting the reader with this combination of sources of knowledge, Agualusa not only plays with the material he has at hand, but with the reader himself, who has to decide for himself whether the inclusion of such stories should be considered serious scientific knowledge or an ironic form of playing along with the ridiculous myths spread in Europe about primitive populations. Instead of using his novel as an opportunity to present a formal rebut against the numerous and outrageous things which have been written/said about peoples of "remote" regions of the world, such as Angola, Agualusa prefers to simply place these European versions along with the versions and with the knowledge of the natives of Angola, giving equal importance to the oral, written, popular and educated forms of wisdom, and extracting from

224 them any supposed moral or scientific value. The incredulity and even the plausibility of such knowledge

will, once again, be judged by the reader.

What Agualusa accomplishes in A Conjura, as well as in his other novels, is significant not only in

specific literary terms. It is not Just that he is taking Angolan literature one step further in their effort to

receive notoriety and acquire universal significance. More than that, it means that Lusophone .African

Literature has indeed been invested with what Laranjeira called "critérios de modemidade," or, for that

matter, with criteria of Postmodemity. Luso-African Literature is more and more attune and in dialogue with the literature of other parts of the world and with other forms of discourse, not necessarily just literary discursive forms. This is especially meaningful for the point we are trying to make in this study - that postcolonial writing is moving in the direction of postmodern writing, and as it does so, it also becomes more and more marvelous real. Agualusa's "pastiche" can be characterized as a discourse on discourse, that is, as a metafictional text, without, however, claiming to be one. Laranjeira levels Agualusa with Umberto

Eco and Roland Barthes in the sense that this Angolan writer is

um investigador, um documentalista, um historiador que abjurou do ensaio. Raros sao os que conjugam os dois méritos, como Umberto Eco. É ainda mais dificil encontrar um grande ensaista que, pelo seu estilo, nos anuncie um ficcionista encapotado que nào chegou a revelar-se: nào ocorre outro que nào seja Roland Barthes. ( 102)

In general terms, Agualusa's fictional prose, just like Pepetela's, contributes to the broader goal of

"afncanizing”or “cannibalizing” the modem African narrative in the sense that this africanization is a step toward the deconstruction of the Western myth, the Western ideal. The more the narrative replaces

European icons, universal truths, by autochthonous, national, regional, and local referents, the more significance it attains as a counterdiscourse, and the more it will speak and relate to those who cannot see their face mirrored in the metanarrative. So, by canibilizing the metanarrative and reconnecting the modem

Luso-African narrative to its traditional oral forms, Agualusa and Pepetela manage deconstruct the

European discourse and re-legitimate the stories of those whose voices have been suppressed. From the

225 standpoint of the Western canon, it really is a sign that the "dissenter.” the Other, is refusing to accept the aesthetico-political and economic model of the European Modem Cathedral and is building its own cathedral in its place, however imperfect it may look to those outside and inside. At least it is no longer an emulation. It is autochthonous and attempts to come as a reply to the provisional truths of the Temples of

Miracle.

Whether their postmodern solution is perfect or imperfect, is not as important as the fact that it is their own. This value judgement of perfection is. of course, relative, especially when the authors are making that choice discussed in Chapter 1. of either accepting the totalizing and monolithic myth imposed by the European Project of Modernity, or rejecting it. Pepetela and Agualusa reject the European myths in order to create new symbols, new statues, new cathedrals. This is what all of their novels seem to be about:

Pepetela’s and Agualusa’s own struggle to voice what cannot be voiced, to find a way to represent the unrepresentable. And that is why they relentlessly give up the neorrealist genre and begin entertaining the marvelous real literary mode as a more viable means of communicating what cannot be represented. In

Yaka^ Pepetela sums up what this postmodern struggle is about:

E a estatua é pura ficçâo. Sendo a estatuaria Yaka riquissima. ela poderia ter existido. Mas nâo. Por acaso. Dai a necessidade de a criar. como mito recriado. Ate porque so os mitos tém realidade. E como nos mitos, os mitos criam a si proprios. falando. Os mitos criam a si proprios falando. ( )

Perhaps these writers como to the realization that there is no use trying to forge a myth for a people, for a nation. The myths speak for themselves, like Kianda does. If the traditional myths were denied and substitutes by new modem myths, they did not die. The myths have survived and will, little by little, occupy their space in the narrative and help contribute to the making of a new nation. The spirit of ancient myths have survived, but they have been derealized. As they begin to find their way back, and as people begin to decipher their meaning for the present situation a marvelous real mosaic may have been created to adorn the new Autochthonous Cathedral.

226 CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrates that there is. in fact, a convergence taking place between the literature produced in Latin America and in Lusophone Africa. This literary convergence culminates in theReal

Maravilloso narrative. We argue that the Real Maravilloso, which used to be considered solely a Latin

American literary phenomenon, can actually be understood as the result of postcolonial and postmodern counterdiscursive practices. This study, therefore, examines these literary counterdiscursive practices by tracing a parallel in the evolutionary practice of the Latin American and Lusophone African Literatures since Independence (see figure at the end of this conclusion).

Before establishing the parallels between the Latin American and the Lusophone African

Literatures, we show how the concept of Modernity emerges in Europe, and what it stands for. Utilizing the ideas elaborated by Marshal Berman, in the book entitled All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. we argue, in the first chapter, that Modernity stands for an ample and complex project - a socio-cultural revolution, one might say - which started in the late 15th century all through the mid 20th century. It is a project that intended to rescue Europe from the chains of Absolutism and its backward medieval mentality. To understand this overall project, we have used the image of the Modem Cathedral to represent the innovations and the changes of this new socio-cultural and economic “architecture.”

In order to counterpoise Berman’s thesis, in which he sees this modem adventure as a very positive movement towards the establishment of new and modem European nation-states, we utilized the ideas of Jean-François Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition. Lyotard views Modemity, and specifically

227 the Enlightenment Project, as a somewhat tragic enterprise. Where Berman sees the Enlightenment Project as promoting the ideas of rationalism, free-will, progress and human development, Lyotard sees it as a game of knowledge and of power legitimation. Where Berman sees the new modem individual becoming the master of his own will, free to pursue his personal endeavors and creative potential, Lyotard sees the new individual being entrapped by the discourse of the emerging bourgeoisie, which, allied to the strength of a new economic structure, the structure of capitalism, eventually creates a society that is practically as authoritarian and totalizing in its ideological intents as the medieval society. Lyotard contends that the discursive practices of Modernity could be reduced to a metanarrative discourse engendered by the bourgeoisie and its self-interests, and that this metanarrative enforced the legitimation of the bourgeoisie in power.

We then proceed to demonstrate how the ideals of the Enlightenment Project inform and affect the

History and the development of Third World nations as they attempt to implement their modernization projects. Due to Europe’s expansionist greed, to Colonization in other words, the same practice of authority and power legitimation used to subjugate the working class in Europe, is used to dominate and subjugate the indigenous populations in the colonies overseas. Just like in Europe the bourgeoisie of each nation state had to exploit the masses to carry out the ideals of the Enlightenment Project, in the colonies the

European administrators had to subjugate the "natives." This was accomplished by the enforcement of a discourse of power that legitimated notions of class and cultural hegemony, as well as practices of racial, moral and religious supremacy. This was accomplished by eliminating the pre-existing socio-political and cultural hierarchies and by enforcing a colonial hierarchical system. In other words, the European national bourgeoisies "replicated" in the colonies a similar kind of unjust social and economic structure they had implemented in Europe. It was s in the sense that it sprang from the same conditions of time and place as the aforementioned European structure, but different it was enforced through violence, fear, enslavement as well as physical and psychological oppression. Thus, by the time the colonies became independent and feel

2 2 8 ready to build their own Modem Cathedral, the colonial socio-economic infra-structure had already been

solidly implemented and served as the base for the construction of the modem Autochthonous Cathedral.

The colonial order practically remained the same after independence: only the power changed hands,

shifting from the metropolitan bourgeoisie to the new local ruling class. Thus the question to be asked is

the following: If the system implemented in the newly-bom nations is somewhat similar to the European

Enlightenment Project, what factors could have hindered the implementation of their modem nation

projects? First of all. what was implemented in the colonies was a system meant to enrich and help develop

the European nation-states and not the colonies themselves. Secondly, when these colonies became

independent, there were psychological and cultural scars, which had to be healed. Only then the sense of

worth and of human dignity of the subjugated peoples could be reestablished. A third aspect that hindered

the new nation-states from developing was the new local ruling class. The individuals forming the local

bourgeoisie were those who most strongly assimilated “the ways of the Europeans" and. consequently,

repudiated various of their own cultural values, customs and beliefs. This new élite would have to first

bridge the ambiguous cultural gap in which they found themselves to be able to identify with the people, its native culture and embrace the national cause with them. As Fanon puts it. the élite would have to "put

itself to school with the people: in other words to put at the people’s disposal the intellectual and technical capital that it has snatched when going through colonial universities" if it wanted to contribute to the reconstruction project. Fanon, however, states that “unhappily we shall see that very often the national middle class does not follow this heroic, positive, fruitful, and just path” (150). Now. if the local bourgeoisie and intelligentsia did not try to overcome this gap and deal with problems of this nature, how would it be possible for the leaders in the new nations to conduct the people in the process of healing from the colonial scars and leading the people from a downtrodden consciousness to a historical and national consciousness? The fact here is that in the Third World we tend to think that it is the masses who are alienated and need guidance in order to develop political consciousness, but, in fact, the bourgeoisie

229 usually is as alienated as the people, especially when they have something to lose because of previous

compromises they have made with the colonial administration.

Another important factor hindering the reconstruction process is not of a domestic order. By the

time the new nations begin to carry out their projects, the First World is already moving into a

postindustrial and postmodern phase. This means that by the time Third World nations are ready to

transform their mainly agrarian economies into capitalist or socialist ones, a new global system of political

and economic interrelations is already underway. At the global level the emphasis has shifted from national

to multinational capitalism while the emerging nations are still struggling at a much more primitive stage of

capitalist (or socialist) development. Thus, these Third World nations experience new forms of indirect

penetration and control as opposed to the international support they would actually need in regards to

technology, know-how and capital investments. In anticipation, we can say that the novels by the

neorrealist authors in this study critically reflect on the aforementioned domestic and international

problems.

In the second chapter we discuss the role played by the realist novel, which emerged in Europe in the late 17"" century, in enforcing and legitimating the European Enlightenment Project, and how it is adopted and adapted as the postcolonial literature emerges in the Third World. The realist novel, in Europe, helped reinforce the bourgeoisie’s ideological agenda by reiterating and "sanctifying ” its intents. It did so by “de-realizing” everything within the new modem capitalist reality, which did not help reinforce bourgeois ideals. Lyotard contends that this "de-realization" consisted of a discursive process that capitalized on uniformity and on homogeneity. It undermined, marginalized and intentionally failed to represent the reality of those outside the bourgeoisie. It erased from the realist description all otherness and difference, as if reality should only be interpreted from the bourgeois optical lens of capitalist development and progress. After all, for the optimal implementation of the project, the ideals of the bourgeoisie had to be assimilated by those who would actually carry out the modernization project. If the masses were led to

230 believe that the bourgeoisie looked after their needs and interests, the masses would be more prone to identify with the bourgeoisie and help promote its political and economic agenda. Thus, the realist novel followed the modem aesthetic-ideological principle identified as the Aesthetic Principle of Beauty.

According to Lyotard, it generated pleasure and satisfaction to see one’s own interests and desires supposedly represented by the ruling class. The Aesthetic of Beauty, therefore, is understood as the aesthetic of de-realization or monolithic representation of reality, and was directly responsible for the generation of the metanarrative.

In Chapter 2 we also contend that the Aesthetic of the Sublime, contrary to the Aesthetic of

Beauty, should be understood as a counterdiscursive practice that led to the relentless development of a tradition of rupture; a rupture from the metanarrative. The Aesthetic of the Sublime emerges to counter the effects of the realist metanarrative of de-realization as it establishes a dialectic relation with the power of the bourgeoisie. All the literary endeavors that are critical of Modernity, that question Modernity from within, therefore, can be said to have joined this tradition of rupture which attempted to dispel bourgeois myths and re-present reality from an anti-bourgeois perspective. The Aesthetic of the Sublime opposed the de-realization of reality and showed the masses that the manner in which they were led to perceive reality was not realistic but actually illusionary and alienating. The romantic and neorrealist movements, as well as other literary and artistic practices within the period of Modernity that attempted to deconstruct the master narrative and its Aesthetic of Beauty, such as the numerous -isms (from Expressionism, Surrealism to

Futurism), in one way or another, exposed the flaws of the Enlightenment Project and demythifted the construction of the Modem Cathedral. The Aesthetic of the Sublime should be understood as the aesthetic of the unrepresentable, that is, an aesthetic that struggles to give form and to represent what was, and still is, hidden or erased from the totalizing metanarrative discourse. Therefore, we establish in the second chapter, that the literature that attempts to re-present the reality of the exploited segments of society and expose socio-cultural and political differences, is part of an emerging postmodern literary movement. In addition, we show that the literature produced in the ex-colonies, in this case, the Latin

American and Lusophone African, also began moving toward a postmodern orientation as they countered the European metanarrative and as they turned towards Real Maravilloso narratives. As a postcolonial narrative genre, the Real Maravilloso contributes to the process of deconstructing the bourgeoisie's practice of de-realization. It antagonizes the role of the bourgeoisie, it reformulates ideas of the modem

Enlightement Project, and it helps to create a modem Enlightenment Project that better suits the autochthonous ideals of reconstruction, their own nation-building projects. Because the Real Maravilloso is an expression of the unrepresented, of otherness and of the marvelous (extraordinary, fantastic, non- canonic and non-hegemonic), inasmuch as it allows the heterogeneous socio-cultural elements to be re introduced in their narratives, we contend that the Real Maravilloso can, and should be, understood as part of the tradition of rupture and, consequently, as part of the postmodern aesthetic. For the characterization of a postmodern aesthetics, we have used the ideas elaborated by Linda Hutcheon in A Poetics o f

Postmodernism and Brian McHale’s Constructing Postmodernism. Among the postmodern aesthetic techniques relevant for this study, we should mention that the change from an epistemological to an ontological dominant; the metahistorical fiction/parody; liminality: intertextual continuity; pastiche/collage; difference and otherness as opposed to dominant and mainstream forms of artistic representation; orality and heteroglosia; authorial and narrational disintegration; the reader-response approach(construction of meaning); the deconstruction of the idea of center; openendedness and multiplicity of perspectives as opposed to neatly closed narratives; the deconstruction of linguistic and textual referentiality, are among the techniques most utilized by the authors examined in the present study.

We establish that the Real Maravilloso. as defined by Alejo Carpentier in Tientos y Diferencias and in “El

Barroco Americano,” is directly linked to postmodern aesthetic principles insofar as it explores a varied combination of these techniques. The Real Maravilloso contributes to the reterritorialization of the other.

In architectural terms we can say that the marvelous real fd ls the empty and blank spaces of the monumental Enlightenment Cathedral (neo-classical architecture) with rich cultural details of the unrepresented. In Latin America these empty spaces are filled with the baroque, according to Carpentier. In

Africa, as we contend, the spaces are filled with aesthetic details that originate in the rich welter of oral traditions.

In Chapter 3. we use mainly Cedomil Goic's Historia de la Novela Hispanoaniericana to analyze the evolutionary path of Latin American Literature and see how Latin American writers deconstruct the modem European realist novel in order to create a narrative more suitable for the formulation of their own modem nation-building myths. Latin Americans started with the allegorical romance sentimental, which forged the myth of a perfect modem nation that emulates, to a great extent, the European Enlightenment myth. Writers who endorsed the European Enlightenment Project resorted to the realist novel and. through simile and didacticism, reinforced the interests of the national and local bourgeoisie. Writers who rose against the local ruling" class resorted to the neorrealist novel to expose the flaws of their bourgeois modem metanarratives and to "Ve "-de-realize their bourgeoisie's ideological agenda. Because neorrealist Latin

American writers deconstruct the European Enlightenment Myth. Chapter 3 metaphorically refers to this deconstmction as the “Explosion of the Modem Cathedral." At the same time as it debunks the European metanarrative it fictionalizes and reintroduces the reality of those outside the centers of power. This is the case of Manuel Scorza. whose novelistic cycle is a clear attempt to counter hegemonic practices in Latin

America. As was noticed in this study, he began with the neorrealist fiction, but little by little he innovated his literary techniques creating novels that moved into the realm of the marvelous real.

In Chapter 4 we show that the literature produced in Lusophone Africa follows a similar path to that of Latin American writers. The initial postcolonial literary endeavors in Lusophone Africa, particularly in Angola, also promoted the construction of an Autochthonous Modem Cathedral. Though not via the romance sentimental, as Latin Americans did. Lusophone African writers did focus on novels that contributed to the reconstruction of their nations. They also deconstructed the European Enlightenment Project, the Modem Cathedral, but mainly through the historical novel. This novel, which re-writes the history of the colonial period from the point of view of the colonized, is as allegoric as theromance sentimental in Latin America. It is also neorrealist inasmuch as it debunks the official metanarrative inherited from Europe and likewise attempts to present history from the point of view of those whose reality had been de-realized. This is demonstrated through the novels of the Angolan writer Artur Mauricio

Pestana dos Santos, or Pepetela. His novels also progressively shift from neorrealist to marvelous real narratives.

In Chapter 4 we point to specific aspects of convergence between Scorza and Pepetela. Both, as was already mentioned, deconstruct the European Enlightenment Project and help construct an alternative narrative myth that envisions the construction of an Autochthonous Modem Cathedral. Both do that by re telling the history from the point of view of the marginalized. Scorza and Pepetela fictionalize "el porvenir del pasado,” that is. they oppose the official historical accounts with versions of "what could have been if...," exploring what their nations could have become had Colonialism never taken place, or had history been told from the point of view of the exploited and de-centered masses. The marvelous real is an optimal narrative approach for this purpose. If during the colonial period the exploited people "had no history,” and where, therefore, denied any space within the official historical accounts, then their history of resistance could be ficitonalized from scratch. Official documents to "prove their side of the story" could be made up as they fancied it. History could be imagined, created, or adapted according to how they would have liked it to occur; From the invention of documents, to how the episodes actually took place, and what heroes participated in the making of their history, it could all be forged. The limits between reality and fiction blur and history can marvelously be re-invented.

This, however, is not what Scorza and Pepetela do in their earlier novels. Their first narratives pursue the reversal of history and the promotion of a new myth, that is, the eventual consolidation of a

Marxist Utopian project to oppose the westem bourgeois capitalist project. The Marxist Utopian neorrealist

234 fiction tried to displace and delegitimize the power of the bourgeoisie and transform the people into the

protagonists of their own History. If on the one hand, the neorrealist novel enabled the reality of the

bourgeoisie to be “de”de-realized. on the other hand, it engendered a new form of metanarrative, a new

form of totalizing and monolithic discourse. In that sense, it merely substituted the hegemonic and modem

westem discourse for an altemative westem discourse. The problem with the neorrealist novel is that it is

based on the same modem assumption that the world is stmctured around a unifying center, that the world

is an organic whole. It subscribes to this myth and assumes that the world's order might be reestablished if

the injustices are corrected and if people are led from a state of downtrodden consciousness to a historical

consciousness. But because the neorrealist perspective is modem, it also subscribes to a certain binary

configuration of the world. From a postmodem perspective, however, the world is seen as far more

complex than East vs West, bourgeoisie vs proletariat, capitalist vs socialist, modem vs traditional,

oppressor vs oppressed. According to Hutcheon. the de-centered and marginalized groups within society

are by no means homogeneous and monolithic in their way of perceiving the reality and envisioning their

future. And it is precisely because the world is not binary, and the de-centered and marginalized people do

not necessarily share a common point of view, that Scorza and Pepetela realize that they have to begin

lowering the stakes' of their own metanarratives and resort to the Real Maravilloso narrative. They realize

the limiting confinements of the neorrealist novels and understand that they cannot continue to fictionalize

the complexity and the contradictions within their specific historical realities through neorrealist accounts.

They lower the stakes of their nation-building narratives by deconstmcting some of their own assumptions.

Their novels could not go on promoting a national consciousness and the envisionment of a Marxist

Utopia, without at the same time reflecting on their intemai problems, problems such as the decadent

national bourgeoisie, the formation of local oligarchies, tribal rivalries, regionalism, political divergence

■McHale contends that in reality "we need not abandon metanarratives - which may, after all, do useful work for us - so long as we 'turn them down 'from metanarratives to 'little narratives. ' lowering the stakes" ( 1992, 24, emphasis added).

235 and civil wars, to name only a few. These were problems that had not been given enough attention to during the previous literary phase in which writers engaged in the process of helping forge a national consciousness. Thus, in novels such as La mmba del relàmpago and La danza inmôvil by Scorza, and the novels Geraçào da Utopia. Xfayombe and Liteji. by Pepetela. we wimess this change in perspective.

Because they could no longer reinforce the narrative of an ideal Marxist Utopia (which also presented its contradictions and also assumed mythical proportions) and had to commit to exposing the vast array of domestic and international problems, their narratives began to portray a dystopian view of reality. They show that chaos takes over precisely because their new post-indepedence reality does not fit neatly into this rigid binary structure. Thus the myth of the Modem Cathedral explodes; what once was a utopian desire materializes into dystopia. And because these novels convey this dystopian and almost apocalyptic perspective, they have been referred to as Imperfect Chapels. They have been called "chapels, ” as opposed to "cathedrals,” to imply that the Latin American and Lusophone African nation-building projects have, in practice, accomplished less than had been envisioned in theory: less than had been imagined in their nation building myths. It also suggests that the project of Modernity in the Third World became less monumental and impressive than they had previously envisioned.

Even though La tiimba del relàmpago. La danza inmôvil,Geraçào da Utopia and Lueji are novels of transition from the neorrealist to the marvelous, one can already identify some features oî the Real

Maravilloso. In these novels they begin to re-invent history and not just attempt to show its reverse or its altemative side. They no longer present the past "of the oppressed" as one single and homogeneous history, but as the intermingling of various possible versions, various past stories that are drawn from the imaginary and from versions that spring up from oral accounts. The emphasis is no longer placed on the "porvenir del pasado,” bu on the "porvenir del porvenir." Meaning for the present and the future can only be derived when multiple versions of the past are taken into consideration. According to Elisabeth Wesseling, ”[t]he effort to enlarge our collective historical memory with stories about the losers of history is certainly not

236 gratuitous, for versions of history are not only relevant to the past, they also affect the present and the

future" (205). The postmodern idea of collage or pastiche conveys exactly that, that history is like a puzzle,

meaning will be produced according to the manner in which we display and combine its pieces, because

from the new-historicist perspective one realizes that there is not one "more veritable" reading or version

of history. The historical puzzle may render multiple interpretations, multiple mosaics and designs,

depending on how we want to piece it together. The pastiche is among some of the postmodern techniques

utilized by Scorza and Pepetela. Some other techniques they utilize, especially in their most recent and less

neorrealist novels, are the following: the relentless abandonment of the metanarrative and the recreation of

"little” myths; the increasing recreation of fantastic tales and riddles originating from orality: authorial

disintegration, multiple narration, metafiction/parody, and consequently, openendedness. These techniques

contribute undoubtedly to transform their fiction into marvelous real accounts whose primary objective is

to de-center official discourses and help the people recognize themselvesas integral subjects, and not

objects, of their history. The development of a mythical consciousness is believed to mediate the process of

leading the people to the development of a historical consciousness.

In Chapter 5 we discuss mainly the novels by José Eduardo Agualusa, from the present

generation of Luso-Affican writers, to demonstrate how and why Lusophone African literary

endeavors can be considered marvelous real. We start, however, by discussing Pepetela's novel O

Desejo de Kianda. This novel establishes a clear and definite break with the neorrealist narrative and

sets the tone for the discussion of Agualusa's novels. We named this chapter Temples of Miracle

because one notices a clear emphasis on questions of an ontological order.

We show that in Pepetela’s O Desejo de Kianda and in most of Agualusa’s works so far, we

do not see the insistence in portraying images of perfect modem cathedrals. There is no attempt at creating a narrative myth that could contribute to the promotion of an Autochthonous Modem

Cathedral. This cathedral, as was discussed in Chapter 4, turned out to be an Imperfect Chapel. Thus,

237 instead of continuing fictionalizing perfect cathedral models, or even modest chapels, they seem to assume the postmodern perspective that focuses onhow these cathedral myths are actually constructed.

The emphasis is placed on the process of construction of myths rather than on the final “product.”

Because their narratives no longer dwell on the possibility of constructing modem myths that will give meaning to the world and restitute the world’s most longed for "order. ” their narratives begin focusing on how meaning is produced to suit specific, contingent, ephemeral, mutable and contradicting

“realities.” For this reason they begin recreating fictional worlds that are more restricted in spacio- temporal terms. In O Desejo de Kianda. contrary to his earlier novels. Pepetela restricts the plot to the reality o f the capital Luanda, in the late 1980s and early 1990s; Agualusa. for instance, restricts his novels either to life in remote villages, untouched by civilization and modem myths, as portrayed in

Feira dos Assombrados and in the short stories D. Nicolau Agita Rosada. or to life in urban settings, such as Luanda or Benguela. after Independence. Most of the time, these novels will explore time and space from a synchronic perspective. Whereas Pepetela’s initial novels where historical and focused on a diachronic sequence of events (some spanned over a period of almost four centuries, like Yakaj. his latest ones, like Agualusa’s. explore the multiple and simultaneous events taking place within one given historical moment. This underscores even further the necessity of "seeing” reality as multiple and heterogeneous rather than as a clear, simple and monolithic phenomenon. Thus, instead of long winding main plots that branch out into subplots, these novels concentrate on the fictionalization of little, marvelous and sometimes incredible stories of their quotidian. Because it is from their daily experiences that people get their tools to "interpret” reality and confer it with meaning. In these novels we identify what what Pires Laranjeira contended about the novelistic approach of the present generation of Lusophone African writers who "abre[m] brechas de fantasia e transm[item] a alguns personagens delirios magicos . ” which free the author from the “responsabilidade de fidelidade ao real empirico” (102).

238 This reiterates our choice for calling the novels in Chapter 5 Temples of Miracle. Temples of

Miracle allude to the image that within the so-called postmodern context, the subject's individual and

most immediate problems take precedence over the search for universal myths and truths. Agualusa's

and Pepetela’s Temples of Miracle reflect less on a universal idea of collectivity, or even a national idea of it, than on the regional, local or personal conditions. Coincidentally or not, Pepetela and Agualusa present characters who, after having participated as guerrilla fighters during the liberation period, have become so disillusioned with postcolonial Angola, that they decide to “give up" the Utopian dream and create their Temples of Miracle. Literal Temples of Miracle because they decide to get into the business of fabricating miracles that would offer solace and relief from their most urgent problems, pains and

frustrations.

Because each and every nation, especially the ones in the Third World, have become more and more dependent and subject to a more globalized reality, the collective national ideals have little by little been frustrated or abandoned. The national bourgeoisie, local politicians, entrepreneurs, governmental officials in general, have become more subject to international rules, to multinational capitalist conglomerates; so much so that they give up the cause of the nation as a whole and begin pursuing their own individual interests. Fanon refers to this as the pitfalls of nationalism, and he uses an image that corroborates our idea of “construction.” He refers to the pitfalls of nationalism as “cracks in the modem edifice. "

This is the Zeitgeist fictionalized in Pepetela's most recent novels and mainly in Agualusa's novels. Their novels re-enact the present day reality in Angola and show that the truths and myths they used to believe in have died. In Estaçào das Chuvas one character boldly states “O Pais morreu. " As a matter o f fact, in Feira dos Assombrados Agualusa conveys a similar sense of apocalypse. The people in the village come to the point in which they actually think they are witnessing the end of the world.

239 thus the story develops around the way people interpret their present apocalyptic reality, the explanations they find for the dead bodies, the burning down of the factory. The explanations do not come only from the sorcerer. The mayor, the store owner, the wives, the children, all of them come up with their interpretations; and their versions are discussed in public meetings presided by the local authorities.

Pepetela’s O Desejo de Kianda is also apocalyptic. The modem buildings in the downtown district of Kinaxixi begin to crumble one by one and since the authorities do not attempt to investigate the problem until the news leaks internationally, the victims have to come up with their own non- scientific explanations, and with their own solutions for their homelessness and for the chaos the crumbling of the buildings has caused in the downtown area. Some people even profited from the chaos.

The fact that these authors concentrate on the little stories is directly related to the loss of that national sense of collectivity which permeated the nation-building project. That collectivity which united (or separated) people during the pre-colonial period, and more so. during the period of the war of liberation, vanished due to frustration and disillusionment; it relentlessly opened way to that

(postmodern) mentality in which each individual attempts to find instant and temporary solutions for their own private world; instant and provisional meaning for their personal problems. Agualusa and

Pepetela reflect on this “reality." as if pointing to the unavoidable truth that any solutions one might entertain, and pursue, will have to be less pretentious in scope, less utopian. The general collective cause is gone; the postmodern individual, whether from the ruling class or else, seems to be investing in solutions for his personal reality or in his local or regional reality. The story related in Yo. Rigoberta

Menchii, in Latin America, is another example of this new narrative that focuses on the life of the people as they try to cope with it, understand it and make it meaningful to themselves. These little narratives do not necessarily serve as national allegories. They do not intend to assume mythical

240 proportions. They are just the expression of the self, the re-inscription of the self, the other de-realized

self, in our current reality. This is where orality emerges as an important tool of expression and

interpretation. Aspects of this reality, whether local, regional or global, whether personal or communal,

whether political or social, incredible or veritable, are expressed, explained and interpreted according to

their point of view, their knowledge, their system of beliefs and their worldview. These are the stories

of resistance against the new metanarratives within the postindustrialist and consumerist society of

mass media communication and globalization, where the individual is no longer supposed to think for

himself.

At the same time that this return to the little myths seems to be characteristic of most of

Agualusa’s novels, in A Conjura, we see him experimenting with yet another important postmodern technique that leads to the representation of the unrepresentable on the one hand, and the reconstruction of multiple texts, on the other. Just like in O Desejo de Kianda, where people can confer meaning to their present situation by acknowledging the presence of Kianda, who resurfaces ancient knowledge, in

.4 Conjura the author brings together a multiplicity of texts from diverse spacio-temporal contexts in order to allow a textual dialogue to take place. He brings together historical documents and newspaper articles from the late 1800s, poetry written by fictional and historical characters from the latter part of the 19'* century and poetry written during the liberation war in the 1960s and 1970s, and stories that originate from the oral tradition which are recounted by some of the characters in the novel. This approach resembles what Hutcheon calls the metahistoriographic fiction: "these other art forms parodically cite the intertexts of both the world’ and art and. in so doing, contest the boundaries that many would unquestioningly use to separate the two [history and fiction]” ( 127). Moreover, within this approach, the reader, not knowing the origin of the texts, and whether they are really historical or not, will have to leam to accept them for what they are or reject them, in order to create his own reading.

The reader has to take a stand and participate in the deciphering of the texts in order to derive meaning

241 from the story. Just like in a riddle, meaning will be derived, of course, depending on the reader's attitude, his linguistic and cultural referents, his system of beliefs, and his willingness to figure out meaning out from "apparently incongruous elements.” As Priebe points out. the function of the riddle, according to Aristotle, "is to express true fact underimpossible combinations" (Priebe 58. emphasis added). What is this postmodern era in which we live if not a riddle?

In view of this overall postmodern novelistic focus, this study states that Scorza. Pepetela and

Agualusa contribute to the formation of a historical consciousness as they promote the development of the peoples’ mythical consciousness. This mythical consciousness is what actually may enable the postmodern, fragmented and alienated individuals (in their most varied and heterogeneous social groups) to indeed regain an understanding of where they came from, who they are. how they have become who they are. and how they deal with who they are. Without reestablishing a bond with their past, the values they have inherited, the sufferings they have undergone, the paths they have followed, the downtrodden consciousness will not develop into self-consciousness or into historical consciousness. Only an illusionary and de-realized historical perception can develop out of a fragmented sense of self. In Desejo de Kianda, the spirit of Kianda is rescued from the past and brought back into life. It is Kianda who can shed some light on the problem of the crumbling buildings in

Kinaxixi. But the new generation of Angolans, disconnected from their ancient and ahistorical past, do not understand Kianda’s message, her words, or the riddle-like form of her language. Unless the people leam to appreciate her presence and leam her language, and thereby be able to reconstruct the lyrics of her chant, Kianda will not be able to illuminate the present reality and help them understand why the nation’s modem edifices are suddenly coming down, why the project of building a modem

Autochthonous Cathedral is failing, or even what to do to reconstruct it. The fact that old Kalumbo. representative of the old and traditional generation, and Cassandra, of the postcolonial generation, need one another to reconstitute Kianda’s message (text), is highly symbolic of what this mythical

242 consciousness actually stands for. The emphasis is placed on the process of piecing together all fragments of their reality and figuring out its contradictions. This becomes more important than imagining what the whole picture will look like.

We conclude from this study that the Contemporary Luso-African Literature is in fact has much in common with the narrative of the Real Maravilloso produced in Latin America. They converge as a result of counterdiscursive practices that followed a similar path from the oral (pre-colonial) narrative tradition to the written literature inherited through colonialism. The literature in both continents, which was mainly oral during the pre-colonial period, gained validation through the written form as it was legitimized by the bourgeoisie in power. Relentlessly, however, within the emerging tradition of rupture, the whole welter of oral knowledge was transposed into the written in order to create a more autochthonous narrative myth that would reterritorialize the de-centered individuals.

Writers on both sides of the Atlantic began doing so by voicing the peoples' versions of history, their side of the story, and their sides on other stories. That was done by including, more increasingly, their oral stories, their oral versions, into the written text. If in the initial stages of postcolonial literature they tried to make these texts fit a somewhat rigid structure of a countermetanarrative, eventually their novels underwent new shifts that led to the creation of Real Maravilloso narratives. These allowed the limits of reality to be stretched so as to encompass the little myths of the other. At this point one witnesses the following: the literature that used to draw elements from the oral into the written narrative form is now struggling to adapt and transform the written into a more overtly oral form. It is in fact the reversal movement. When the Enlightenment Project was implemented, the written word (narrative) had acquired legal, official and authoritative status as opposed to the oral narrative: now, however, the opposite is happening. We now see the written narrative desperately moving back to orality, for the more it encompasses the voice of the marginalized, the better a chance it will have to be identified as a truly collective or communal discourse. The contemporary narrative can no longer rely on modem

243 aesthethic principles that help legitimate in power those who used to or stilloppress the other. The postmodern narrative relies on aesthetic principles that helplegitimate the other, creating the space for the other to redefine himself. Thus, writers such as Scorza in Latin America, and Pepetela and

Agualusa, in Angola, converge in their intent to fictionalize history through the peoples' stories and experiences. They go from telling history to storytelling. As they do so, they are more likely to transform the process of building the Autochthonous Cathedrals into a more "democratic" or collective space of invention. The Temples of Miracle become the space of meaning negotiation, of political action, of inscription of the self within society.

Even though the scope of this study was limited to the expression of a few authors in Latin

America and in Lusophone Africa, more and more we find evidence that these writers are not alone.

Younger generations of writers, such as Agualusa's in Angola, are continuing this tradition of rupture, in different parts of the world. Both in the First and in the Third World, and in all the worlds in between, writers are resorting to the Real Maravilloso and to postmodern narrative techniques that attempt to destabilize notions of center and its official discourses. In International Postmodernism.

Theory and practice, we leam about this simultaneous literary thrust toward a more socio-political postmodern consciousness. The modem metanarratives discourses are being deconstmcted everywhere, not only in the ex-colonial Third World. This thmst is significant inasmuch as it indicates that, at this day and age, where people could easily be surrendering to complete helplessness, despair and disillusionment, and buy into the "creeds” of this phony Temples of Miracle created by postindustrial capitalists, they are still resisting. And it is through this process of resistance, in which they deconstruct totalizing discourses that attempt to de-realize their existence, their otherness and their differences, that they reinvent their space, their identity and thereby reconquer their dignity. Even though this process of constant deconstmction may seem to lead nowhere and only enable people to find provisional and ephemeral solutions for their present and future reality, at least it allows them to finally accept and be

244 proud of who they are. Thus, if on the one hand, we feel that all we have forged are postmodern

Temples of Miracle, that offer no more than temporary miracles to solve our daily problems, this is also the time in which more and more we conquer the space to invent our own narratives, or own, unique and private sanctuaries, our Temples of Miracle.

245 Medieval Cathedral Modem Cathedral liiiperrect Chapels /Tciiiples of Miracles

Utopia From Dystopia to Uehronie?

Latin America

1800 1850 1900 1920 1950-1960 1970-1990 2000 Colonialism Independence National Bourgeoisie I’ostm odeni Period Nation Building Modernization N ational Enlightenment Ideals Identity ______C olonial Foundational Fiction Realistn & > Neorrealistn Literature of the Boom Literature Rom ance N aturalism M odem ism I Fall from the Sacred Imperfect Chapels Sentimental Positivism Ivory • Political Consciousness Multiple realities Love-couple: Deiemiinism Tow er • Indigenism/Kegionalism I leteroglosiu allegory of national Myth: Perfect > Binary Worldview Spacio-temporal blurritig ideal M odem > Myth of Modern Cathedral dispelled: Intertextual continuity M yth. C athedral Imperfect Chapels Pastiche/ Collage Enlightenment Self-Keferentlality Project: Modem Parody/ Metuliistorical Fiction Cathedral Scorza No myth: Temples of Miracle Da C unha and Llosa

Scorza

From Conciencia t'encida to Conciencia Histàrica Frotn Conciencia MItica to Conciencia Histàrica

A frica

1800 1850 1900 1950 I960 1980-1990 2000 Colonialism Pre-Independence Independence Nation Building: National Identity Modemization Civil Wars: Regionalism & Ethnocentrlcity

Colonial Literature • Liberation Poetry • Foundational Fiction • Real Maravilloso • Realist Novel • Neorrealistn • Multiple realities • Myth: Modern Cathedral • Binary Worldview • 1 leteroglosiu & tirulity • Myth of Modern Cathedral • Pastiche/ Collage dispelled: Imperfect Chapels • Parody / Metuliistorical Ficlton Sorom enho • Spacio-temporal blurring Pepetela • No myth: temples of Miracle

Pepetela and Aguulusu From Conciencia Vencida to Conciencia Histàrica Frotn Conciencia MItica to Conciencia Histàrica

Figure 1: Evolution of latin American and African Literatures BIBLIOGRAPHY

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